


Shifting Sands

by Cardigan_Quincy



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Action/Adventure, Blood, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Past Torture, Platonic Cuddling, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, also present torture, i'm just terrible to Shiro and Lance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2018-10-10 19:58:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 38,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10446222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cardigan_Quincy/pseuds/Cardigan_Quincy
Summary: Lance picked himself up from the floor gingerly, testing his muscles before putting too much weight on them. Nothing seemed injured, aside from a few aches that would likely become a nice collection of bruises by tomorrow morning. But considering how hard Blue had fallen, Lance felt lucky.Blue was less lucky.---Lance is stranded on a desert planet, injured and captured by someone who will go to any lengths to get their hands on the Black Lion. Fortunately or otherwise, he's not alone.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Shiro and Lance are my favorites. They must suffer.
> 
> (I've had the idea for this fic for weeks, and this afternoon I somehow wrote the entire first chapter in one sitting. At the current pace, I think it's going to end up being somewhere around 10 chapters long... Hope you guys like it!)

Lance could not think of a worse time for his comms to go out.

“Guys?” He tried again, holding onto the hope that it would come back online. “Hello?”

Nothing.

He picked himself up from the floor gingerly, testing his muscles before putting too much weight on them. Nothing seemed injured, aside from a few aches that would likely become a nice collection of bruises by tomorrow morning. But considering how hard Blue had fallen, Lance felt lucky.

Blue was less lucky.

Her presence in Lance’s head was still there, but it was faint, tired. Lance stumbled to his feet, pulling off his helmet. A crack ran down the visor, and the outside was battered and dented. He was glad he’d been wearing it; he definitely didn’t want those dents in his head. The blue glow of the helmet had gone out, as had the comms. Lance was alone, without any way to contact the rest of the team, hopefully still in the air.

He hoped no one else had gotten hit, anyway.

“Hey, Blue,” he murmured, making his way back to the pilot chair. He tapped a few buttons on the control board, but nothing happened. “You with me, girl? What’s going on?”

Blue’s deep-throated rumble in his head sounded far away, too tired to respond. She’d taken the full force of the blast, and Lance could tell that it would take some time for her to recover. He didn’t blame her. He hadn’t seen the shot coming, hadn’t even seen the weapon at all, totally unprepared until Keith shouted a warning. And by then, it had been too late to move out of the way. Lance silently cursed himself for not having seen it sooner.

Blue’s presence shifted slightly. _Not your fault._

“Right,” Lance said quietly. Maybe it wasn’t entirely his fault, but he should have been paying more attention. He’d rushed ahead of the rest of the team, stupidly thinking that because he didn’t see any sign of life, there wouldn’t be any danger. And now Blue was down, needing time to recover before they could get off of this planet.

He wasn’t even sure they had that time.

Coran had picked up a distress signal this morning. Allura tracked it back to this planet, but just as they arrived, the signal had disappeared again. Suspicious, Shiro instructed them to stick together until they figured out what was going on, but they didn’t form Voltron in the event that they needed to split up.

The planet had seemed uninhabited, a huge wasteland with huge tree-like cacti that made it seem more of a forest than a desert. Lance hadn’t thought that any creatures could survive in a place like this, but apparently he’d been proven wrong. The cactus-forest provided the perfect cover for whoever they were up against—whoever had shot Blue out of the sky.

Lance rested a hand on the control panel. “I’m going to look around and try to get Keith’s attention or something,” he told Blue. “I’ll be back soon. We won’t leave you here.”

Blue grumbled, tired but still a warm presence inside of his head. _Be careful._

“’Course,” Lance said. He pulled on his helmet. Despite the damage, it was still at least semi-functional as simply a helmet. If someone out there decided to take a shot at him, he wanted all the protection he could get. Holding his bayard at the ready, he climbed out of the lion and looked around.

He’d crashed in the middle of the cactus-forest. Several of the weird trees had been torn down in the impact, pieces of dry, grey-green plant stuck to the outside of the lion. Dusty sand blew in the hot wind, pieces of it finding their way through the crack of his visor. He squinted against the glare of the sun, scanning the area quickly. He didn’t see any sign of trouble, so he risked a look upwards.

The rest of the lions were still in the air. Lance let out a breath he hadn’t quite realized he was holding. They didn’t seem to be doing anything, just hesitating in the air high above him, barely more than colored dots at this distance.

Lance frowned. What were they doing?

Suddenly, the red lion surged forward. Almost immediately, a volley of blasts shot towards them, coming from somewhere off to Lance’s left. Keith and Red somehow managed to outmaneuver the first round, but then it just kept coming, and eventually they pulled back out of range. If this was the same weapon that shot Blue, then a single hit is all that was needed to put a lion out of commission for the rest of the battle, at least. Lance didn’t think even the yellow lion could handle being hit more than once.

As Lance watched, a few other problems became apparent to him. The weapon obviously had a much longer range than any of the lions, so there was no way they could just take it out before it shot them. Maybe if they formed Voltron, they could manage to get close enough, but without Blue…

Lance sighed. He felt so useless right here, perched on top of Blue’s back. He had a great view of the battle (if you could call it that), but nothing he could do to help.

Unless…

The idea sparked in Lance’s mind, and now he couldn’t shake it. He climbed off of Blue, stopping back inside the cockpit to forage for supplies.

“Gonna take a walk,” he told her as he poked through a storage box at the back of the room. First aid supplies, a blanket, some sort of Altean food rations. He opened the first aid kit, finding a roll of tape inside, and pulled off his helmet. He brushed tiny pieces of grit from his face, leaving a little pile of sand on the floor. Pinning the helmet under one arm, he used the tape to cover the crack in the visor, hoping it wouldn’t restrict his vision too much. At any rate, it would be better than being completely blinded by sand in his face.

He didn’t like this planet at all. Water was his element, not this constant dry, burning sand. It wasn’t even like being on the beach, where there was the ocean to make the hot sand bearable. He just hoped that even without the water, Blue would be okay.

Lance packed the things back into their box, shoved his helmet on, and headed back outside. He hesitated for just a moment, hand on Blue’s side.

He felt her resting, slowly, _slowly_ gaining her strength. Hopefully, by the time he was back from this, she’d have recovered enough to get off the ground.

“I’ll be back,” he said quietly. “Rest up.”

Blue rumbled in response, and then fell silent again.

Lance took a deep breath, shifted his bayard into a gun, and headed into the cactus-forest on his left.

The cacti-trees were even weirder up close. They stretched upwards for ten, twenty, sometimes even thirty feet, shooting off into branches that twisted into strange shapes and  
angles. The trunks close to the ground were covered in thick, leathery skin, punctured by sharp spines. As the tree grew higher, the plant seemed to get greener and the skin less tough, with longer, thinner spines. Lance wasn’t about to try climbing it to see what the other differences were, though.

The firing of the weapon somewhere ahead of him had stopped, but when he looked up, shielding his face with one hand, he could still see the rest of the team high above him. He realized that they were probably worried about him. He wished his comms were working, that there was some way for him to let them know that he was all right.

He shook his head to clear the thought. Nothing he could do about it now. He’d just have to make sure this worked, and then they’d be able to get past this weapon, whatever it was, and come get him and Blue.

It would be okay.

Lance kept walking, sweat dripping down his face and collecting under his armor. It was too hot here, even in the shade of the cactus-trees. It was hard to tell if he was going in the right direction, but he gave it his best shot anyway.

At least, until the weapon started firing again.

Lance ground to a halt, looking up at the sky. At first, he thought Keith was trying to get past the weapon again, until he noticed that all four lions were moving. They’d scattered in all different directions, each trying to keep out of range of the weapon, but still steadily moving towards the planet.

Blasts rained out on them, and every time the weapon fired, Lance felt the vibrations. It rumbled in his chest, shaking the sand he stood on. Whatever this thing was, it was _big._ And, he realized while watching the battle above him, it seemed like there might be more than one. Even as the lions scattered, the laser bursts stayed focused on each of them. There was no way one weapon could re-aim and fire that quickly and consistently.

Lance swore as loudly and colorfully as he could. There was no one out here in the desert to tell him to watch his language.

His plan had been to sneak in and try to disable the weapon somehow, at least long enough for the rest of the team to get closer. But if there were at least four of them, there was no way he could take them all out.

Lance took off in a run towards the sound of the weapon. There had to be something he could do. He wasn’t about to just stand in the middle of a bunch of overgrown cacti and watch his friends get shot at. He _had_ to do something to help…

And then he stopped again. Two creatures stepped out from behind a cactus tree, both armed with some sort of guns and wearing armor that looked suspiciously like the cactus-tree skin. Half again as tall as Lance and twice as thick, they looked dangerous. Lance had faced dangerous before, though.

“Halt!” One of the creatures yelled in a strange, clicking tone, raising his gun. “Surrender or be des—”

“No thanks,” Lance muttered. His own weapon was already up and he’d squeezed off two shots—one each—before running for cover. His feet sank into the sand, kicking up little dust clouds behind him. Shots fired around him. Apparently he’d missed, or maybe the cactus armor was just that amazing. Maybe he’d have to get himself some. At least reinforce his helmet, so his comms didn’t go out next time he crashed—

The crash. He was leading them straight back to Blue.

He couldn’t do that. For all he knew, they worked for the Galra. There was _no way_ he was letting them get to his lion. Never ever ever.

He turned, zigzagging as well as he could, ducking around the cactus-trees for cover, trying to put as much distance between himself and the alien creatures as he could. He stopped every now and then, firing a couple of shots back at them, but it never phased them. They raised shields, apparently made of the same cactus armor stuff, and his shots just bounced off of them.

Great. Just great.

The weapon kept firing in the distance. Lance hoped that they were all still all right, hoped that their plan was going better than his, but he couldn’t risk looking up to see.

Sharp turn left. Through a thick clump of cactus-trees.

First, he needed to get away from these creatures. And at this rate, he was going to be hopelessly lost by the time he did.

Sharp right. Turn just long enough to fire twice behind him.

He hoped he’d find some way to get back to Blue. Maybe she’d have recovered enough to get off the ground. Maybe, somehow, they could get past the weapons, back to the castle…

Duck behind another group of cactus-trees. Fire again.

He wasn’t gaining on them. His breath was rough in his chest, and the tape he’d used to cover the crack was peeling off. Sand stuck to his sweaty face.

Turn right. Zig-zag through the trees—

He started to wonder if he was going to be able to outrun them at all. Would they capture him, or would they just shoot him? Which would be worse? Would they kill him quickly, or would it hurt? Would they just leave him here to bleed out in this _stupid_ forest?

He ducked behind another group of cactus-trees. They were gaining. He didn’t know how much longer he could stay ahead of them.

A blast hit the tree behind him, narrowly missing his shoulder. He ran harder, desperate to keep ahead. He had to keep moving, had to stay out of range—

And suddenly, he was out of the cactus forest.

He skidded to a stop, nearly losing his footing in the soft sand. The sun glared down on him. A few meters ahead, the ground dropped away, turning from a sandy forest into a rocky cliff.

Lance turned around, raising his gun. This was it. His stomach turned at the thought of the ground behind him, straight down for hundreds of feet, nothing but rocky outcrops to stop the fall. Would that be better than whatever these aliens had planned for him?

The two creatures came into views, weapons at the ready. Lance fired, one shot after another, but they kept coming, taking his shots on their shields. He tried to hit somewhere, anywhere unprotected, but it didn’t do a thing. Why wasn’t this working? Panic screamed inside of his head. He couldn’t be this useless. He really couldn’t take down two enemies? Just two?

And then one of the shots hit him.

At first he couldn’t feel the pain. Just the force of it hitting his shoulder, knocking his bayard from his hands and driving him stumbling backwards.

_No, not backwards, not the cliff—_

Too late. He lost his footing and fell.

Desperately, he clawed around, trying to catch hold of anything that could stop his fall. His fingers caught at sand, falling away to nothing in his grasp. Then he grabbed something solid—a rock jutting out from the side of the cliff. He clung to it for dear life, only then realizing how much pain the blast to his shoulder had caused. His fingers tremble from the sudden pain. Lance screamed, more from frustration than pain, determined to hold on.

The rock gave away, and he was falling again.

This time, he didn’t have a chance to reach for anything else. He hit the ground hard, slamming into his left shoulder with a loud _pop_ that turned Lance’s stomach, driving the wind from his chest. He bounced, rolled further down the cliff. The world spun even after he had stopped moving.

His eyes smarted and he gasped for breath. For one awful, sickening second, he couldn’t get any air at all into his lungs. He thought he was dying, suffocating somehow, buried in sand at the bottom of the cliff.

His lungs kicked back into gear, and he gulped in the air, more grateful for oxygen than he’d ever been before. It stung, burning his throat and his chest, but he gasped in more of it anyway.

Then he felt the pain everywhere else.

His shoulder hurt the worst. Sharp pain spiked through his arm, his chest. When he tried to roll off of it, tried to relieve the pressure, it hurt worse, and he nearly threw up. His vision darkened, black spots crowding the edges on his sight.

He forced his eyes to focus. His arm, stretched out on the sand in front of him, look twisted in the wrong way. He couldn’t move it. He tried to sit, and the pain became even worse. He couldn’t move at all.

The panic was still there, tightening his stomach into a knot. He needed to get up. He had to get away from them, get back to Blue…

He heard footsteps in the sand around him, and he realized it was too late.

The footsteps walked in front of him, and he saw the creatures’ feet. They were both here. He didn’t know how they’d gotten down so fast. Or maybe he’d passed out. He didn’t know anymore. He heard the creatures talking to each other in their strange, clicking voices, but he couldn’t make out words. He wished they’d just shoot him already.

Their hands reached down to pick him up, and the last thing Lance heard before he passed out was his own screaming.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early update, anyone?  
> Lance is a tricky character to write. Hopefully I'm not doing /too/ badly for my first time writing him... I feel like I might be missing out on the cocky aspect of his character, but then again, it's hard to be cocky when you're barely conscious. Idk. I'm trying. XD

Lance drifted in and out of consciousness. The two alien soldiers dragged him through the sand, each one holding an arm. When he woke, all he could feel was the stabbing, burning pain in his left shoulder, forming a hazy edge around his vision. He saw sand all around him, bright glaring sun burning into his eyes until he squeezed them shut again. Darkness welcomed him, coaxed him into the empty nothingness where at least he could stop feeling the pain, and then it left him screaming in the torturous light again.

He caught blurred glimpses of cactus-trees towering over him, mercifully blocking out some of the light. They were taking him back the way he’d come. Hazily, he remembered Blue, defenseless and alone, and he wondered if she had enough energy to even put up her particle barrier.

They couldn’t know she was there. And yet, they’d shot her out of the sky, so of course they’d know she would be on the planet somewhere. Lance’s eyes snapped open with the realization that the two soldiers carrying him were likely scouts, sent to look for the lion. They hadn’t been after him at all.

The alien on his left jerked at his shoulder. Lance was out of energy for screaming and the only sound that came out of his mouth was a strangled choking noise. “Stop moving,” the creature said.

Lance’s eyelids drooped and he went still again, allowing himself to be pulled along. He breathed slowly, carefully, trying to calm the pain in his shoulder, just enough to think. He doubted that he’d be able to get away from them, but maybe if he slowed them down, he could buy Blue enough time to get back online. The lions sometimes moved on their own if their paladin was in danger, right? He imagined the blue lion swooping in to save the day, knocking the two creatures out of the way, the two of them returning to the castle as… Well, as not dead. That was all he was asking for.

The pain in his shoulder faded to the background. It still hurt as much as ever, but he’d been able to focus somewhere else. He took one last deep breath, and then acted.

He yanked his uninjured right arm away from the alien creature, who must not have been expecting its half-conscious prisoner to move at all and let out an undignified squeak of surprise. Lance used the moment to his advantage, moving his right arm to hold his left arm and pulled away from the other guard. He rolled to his knees, facing the two scouts. His shoulder had twisted painfully in the second scout’s grasp and now Lance felt it, gasping for breath and sweat running down his brow under his helmet.

The ground swayed under him, and he realized that this had been a _bad_ idea. He couldn’t move without passing out. There was no way he could take on two much larger enemies, especially when he was unarmed himself.

In the second it took him to realize this, the second scout unclipped another, shorter weapon from its side. It raised the weapon over Lance. He tried to move out of the way, but the most he could manage was dizzily raising his right arm in an attempt to protect his shoulder.

The weapon, shaped like a metal baton, crashed into Lance’s forearm with surprising force. A distant buzzing sounded in his ears, and then pain took over his whole body. It was sharp, intense, as though the blinding white pain from earlier had gotten inside of him, hurting everywhere. And then it stopped, just as suddenly, and the scout stepped back.

Lance was curled on his side, although he didn’t remember falling. He shook, trembling uncontrollably. His heart raced and his breath came in shaky bursts. His vision faded in and out, everything looking strange. He could see shapes, light reflecting off of things, but colors were distorted.

The weapon was electric, he realized—it had felt a little like getting tasered with Pidge’s bayard, except a _lot_ worse.

The alien creatures each grabbed his shoulders again and resumed dragging him to wherever they wanted.

He still heard that buzzing, crackling sound in his ears. The pain in his shoulder had faded almost completely, which was a little worrisome. He couldn’t feel much of anything. He wondered if he was going into shock. He hoped not.

The crackling in his ears got louder. He grimaced, wishing he could put his hands over his ears, try to block it out—

The crackling gave way to a different, much more welcome noise: Keith’s voice.

“—iro, we have—”

Lance’s eyes shot open again. Somehow, the com in his helmet was coming back online. The electric shock must have given it enough power to start up again—

“—get Blue back—”

That was Shiro. They’d found Blue. It was going to be okay—

“Shiro, you can’t—”

“—won’t leave him! I’m—”

The feeling in Lance’s shoulder was coming back, but he tried to ignore it.

“—cover him, Hunk—”

“—can’t do this, Shiro—”

“—too dangerous—”

The scout dug his fingers into Lance’s shoulder unexpectedly, and he let out a cry of pain. Immediately, his ears were filled with the buzz of every other member of the team.

“Lance! Where are—”

“—you hear us? Lance—”

“—all right? What’s going—”

“—gonna be okay, Lance, we’ll find—”

“—you see him? Shiro—”

“—gotta find him, he’s hurt—”

Lance wished he could speak, tell them he was okay, help figure out a plan to get out of this mess. But he didn’t want to risk it. Now that he had this little connection to his team, he couldn’t bear the idea of his two captors tearing it from him. The moment he spoke up, they’d know there was something going on. Not to mention he felt so weak, he couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore.

And so he just listened, trying to make sense of the fragmented phrases.

“—get Blue back to the castle. I’ll find Lance.”

“—is faster than Black. I should—”

“—what I say, Keith! Get—”

Shiro’s voice was cut off by a sharp cry of surprise. A stab of worry went through Lance.

“Pidge!”

“Keith, get her out now—”

The noise crackled in his ears, deteriorating into a fuzzy chaotic mess. Lance could pick out their voices here and there, and he could hear Allura’s voice too now. But the words stopped making sense. He wasn’t sure how much of that was the connection, and how much was his inability to stay conscious.

Every time the creatures dragging him turned or went over any sort of uneven ground, it jarred his shoulder. The darkness called to him again. He tried to resist it at first. The little bit of connection to the rest of the team helped. He focused on their voices, and occasionally caught someone saying his name, promising that it would be okay.

But then it became harder and harder to hear. What voices he could make out at all spoke gibberish, distorted sounds that meant nothing. He drifted again. The pain faded, just for a moment.

When the darkness left, so did the crackling voices. He was still wearing his helmet, but the comms were out again. The little bit of power his helmet had gotten from the scout’s weapon was gone.

One of the scouts tripped over something in the sand, wrenching Lance’s arm. He slipped into unconsciousness almost before the pain registered.

When he woke up again, it felt different. At first he didn’t know what it was. Everything felt hazy and he was tired. He couldn’t think, couldn’t focus. He didn’t know where he was, and for some reason, he didn’t care. He just wanted to go back to sleep.

The muscles in his shoulder spasmed, but he didn’t feel the pain like he should have. He heard his breath, shallow and ragged, almost rattling as it came out. He was aware of lying down, of being still, but he didn’t know what was going on…

He was lying down. They’d stopped.

_Come on, Lance. Enough passing out. You need to focus._

He forced his eyes open, only managed to raise his eyelids a sliver, and then struggled to figure out what he was seeing. Feet… The aliens’ feet. Sand. They were still in the forest. Why had they stopped? Were they just resting? Lance wasn’t that heavy…

He caught sight of movement in the edge of his vision. He struggled to see, forced his eyes open wider. The light was almost blinding. He forced himself to focus. Caught sight of another pair of feet. White, and black, and—

Shiro.

His arm was glowing. Dark blood trickled down the side of his face. His chest heaved, and even from this distance, Lance could see that his eyes weren’t completely focused.

His gaze settled on Lance for just a second. He could see his mouth move, but couldn’t make out words. Couldn’t make out sounds. Lance tried to form words himself, but he couldn’t get it out. He struggled for breath, almost gasping in the sand that clung to his face, his lips, everywhere. His helmet was gone, and hot wind blew the grit over his face, as if it was trying to bury him.

The feet moved around him. That was all he could see—feet and sand. He couldn’t see the fight, didn’t know how Shiro was doing. Didn’t know where the rest of the team was. Couldn’t warn Shiro about the electric shock weapon. Couldn’t do anything. Didn’t know anything.

Lance’s eyes slipped shut again.

 

#

 

Light pressed at the back of Lance’s eyelids. He grumbled, not wanting to wake up. In the back of his mind, he still remembered the pain that had caused him to pass out in the first place. He wasn’t ready to feel it again.

“Lance. Lance, c’mon, wake up…”

That was Shiro’s voice. Lance frowned, confusion filling him. But he’d been alone… How could Shiro be here?

He forced his eyes open, but his vision swam, distorting everything he saw. He could just make out a blur of Shiro’s face, a shock of white hair…

Was he in the castle? They’d rescued him, and he felt a surge of relief. He’d be okay. It was going to be okay—

He moved, and he wasn’t okay anymore.

Pain stabbed at his shoulder, a headache pounded behind his eyes, and now he felt nauseous. His armor was gone, leaving nothing to protect his assortment of injuries from the hard ground beneath him. He sat up too quickly, feeling dizzy and his vision starting to black out again.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Shiro said, his voice sounding distinctly worried. “Take it easy, Lance…”

He remembered now. He remembered the broken comms, the two alien scouts who’d dragged him wherever they wanted. He remembered all of the pain, and then Shiro who had been there just before he passed out for the last time.

Lance curled up around his knees, squeezing his eyes shut again. Tears built up behind them, but he didn’t want to cry now. Not in front of Shiro. He’d caught a glimpse of sand-covered ground behind him.

They weren’t on the castle. He was still on this stupid, cursed planet.

He clutched his left arm to his side, trying to stop the pain in his shoulder, but it wouldn’t go away. Every time he moved, he felt like he would throw up.

“Just breathe,” Shiro told him. “Breathe, Lance. It’s going to be okay. I’m here. It’s okay.”

Lance wanted it to be okay. More than anything, he wanted the pain to stop, to get out of here, to go back home and everything _be okay._

Finally, Lance felt his breathing come a little easier. The pain was still there, but he could manage it a bit better. Slowly, he lifted his head. His vision didn’t go dark, and he managed to focus on Shiro. Dried blood covered the side of his face, probably from a cut over his eyebrow. A dark bruise was forming on his cheekbone, just below the scar over his nose. His armor was gone, same as Lance’s, stripped down to the thin black suit they wore under the armor. Shiro knelt a few feet away from Lance, his Galra arm stretched awkwardly behind him and chained to the wall.

“Hey,” Shiro said, giving him a tired smile. “You okay?”

It was kind of a stupid question, and Lance could see on Shiro’s face that he knew it too. He blinked a few times, clearing the last bit of dizziness from his sight. They were in some kind of cell without windows. Three walls were made of solid stone, and the fourth had a door cut into it, metal bars crossing the opening to keep them from leaving. Light glowed from the upper corners of the ceiling. The floor was covered in sand, but Lance could see patches where it had been swept aside, showing a stone floor underneath.

“Not really,” Lance said. It was the first time he’d spoken since… Since he’d first seen the aliens. His voice was hoarse and rasping from all the screaming he’d done. His throat ached.

“I’m sorry,” Shiro said quietly. “I thought I could get you out of this. It didn’t… It didn’t go like I planned.”

“Not your fault.” Lance slid towards Shiro, grimacing when it jolted his shoulder. “I’m sorry for rushing ahead of everyone and getting into this mess in the first place.”

“You had no idea what was here,” Shiro said. “Don’t blame yourself.”

It was hard for Lance to move, but he wanted to be next to Shiro, so he kept at it, inching his way across the floor as painlessly as he could. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Shiro promised. “Just a couple of little things. Nothing that won’t heal on it’s own.”

“You sure?” Lance settled himself on the cell floor next to Shiro.

“Positive.” Shiro shifted his position, sitting a little more comfortably, although Lance wasn’t sure how comfortable it was with one arm chained to the wall above his head. “What about you? You were really out of it when they brought you in here.”

“I… I fell. Landed on my shoulder. Might’ve hit my head—” A concussion would explain a lot of what he’d been feeling, Lance thought— “but I think I’m okay.” Lance looked down at his shoulder. It was round and swollen. His arm still seemed like it was going in the wrong direction, although nothing looked broken.

“I think it’s dislocated,” he said finally.

Shiro moved again, turning slightly so he could see Lance’s shoulder better. With his human hand, he gently coaxed Lance’s right arm away from his left, giving him a better view of the injury.

“I think I agree with you,” Shiro told him, his voice gentle. “It doesn’t look broken to me. So… There’s good news and bad news.”

Lance looked up at him.

“The good news is that all you need to fix a dislocated shoulder is a steady set of hands,” Shiro said. “The bad news—”

“—Is that you only have one free hand,” Lance finished.

Shiro nodded grimly. “They did something to my arm. Some sort of restraining cuff that’s messing with the tech so I can’t…” He jerked at the chain, his arm completely stiff and unmoving, unable to even bend his fingers. “I can’t use it at all.”

Lance looked up at it. Thought about getting up, running his fingers over the cuff, trying to figure some way to get it off. But he wasn’t good with that sort of thing—Pidge or Hunk would be far more useful in this situation. Not to mention that he didn’t trust his legs to hold him up long enough to get a good look.

“Pidge,” he said suddenly, and Shiro looked at him. “Is she okay? I heard you guys through my helmet for a little bit, and I thought she might have been hurt…”

“The green lion took a hit from one of those weapons,” Shiro said. “Keith got her back to the castle. She’ll be okay.”

Lance nodded, feeling relieved. “Okay. Good.”

Shiro moved backwards, leaning his back against the wall, then brushed the floor with his free hand. Lance slid to the spot Shiro had gestured to, settling against his shoulder. He settled his left arm in his lap, trying to keep it in a position that wouldn’t hurt him too much, then relaxed. The contact felt nice; he felt Shiro’s warmth, almost as comforting as a hug.

The air in the cell was cold. It was hard to believe that the last time he’d been awake, Lance had been sweating.

“It’s cold in here,” Lance said, his voice sounding drowsy already. “That’s not just me, right?” He really hoped he wasn’t going into shock.

“No, it’s definitely cold in here.” Shiro tipped his head back against the wall. “We’re underground. You were out when they dragged us down here, so you missed all the tunnels.”

“Tunnels.” Lance followed Shiro’s example and rest his head on the wall, letting his eyes close. “No wonder we didn’t see anything from the air.”

“There’s so much hidden down here,” Shiro said. “I only saw bits and pieces, but there’s a ton of Galra tech everywhere, although no Galra that I saw. It’s all those lizard aliens.”

“They’re lizards, huh,” Lance mumbled, not bothering to open his eyes. “Didn’t get to see any without that armor.”

“They’re lizards. Big and scaly, mostly grey-green, although there’s a bit of variation. No tails, though. Big hands, probably for digging…”

Shiro’s voice faded to a background noise. Lance had a brief moment to hope that he didn’t mind being used as a pillow, and then he fell asleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Updated weekly"  
> Evidently weeks are now 4-5 days long. This fic is speeding along a lot faster than I thought it would... I can't stop writing it! I can't promise I'll keep updating this quickly for the entire duration of it, but for now, I'll keep posting early if I have the chapter done.  
> (Also: I added a couple of new tags for Shiro. Pretty intense nightmare flashback thingy in the beginning. Not a lot of blood, but a lot of pain, so if that bothers you, just skip the opening italics.)

_Shiro’s arm burned with pain._

_His ability to move had been taken from him. He didn’t know if he was tied down anymore. The pain had been a part of him for so long that he’d lost the energy to fight back at all._

_Even screaming was too much for him. He had screamed, at first. He remembered the way they tore at his throat, sharp cries that hurt to come out. He’d screamed until his throat was hoarse, and still the pain was there, never fading or recessing in the slightest. He wished he could just pass out, prayed to any being that was out there to just put him out of his misery. And then—and he hated himself for it; God, he hated everything about it—he begged them, the druids, the scientists, anyone—to please just make it stop. Let him pass out, let him die, just_ make it end please.

_The pain had continued. His screams gave way to quieter gasps, tiny, pathetic whimpers._

_Now, he couldn’t muster the energy for a single sound._

__

_He saw shapes moving around him, figures he once recognized. His vision had been fading in and out, even if the pain didn’t. It wasn’t unconsciousness; it was just too much pain for his body to handle, and it was shutting other things down. He didn’t know how he was still conscious. He didn’t know what they’d done to him._

__

__

__

__

__

__

__

_He wanted to die. He hoped he would, even thought he probably would soon. He could only take this pain for so long, couldn’t he? Death seemed like the only escape now. He’d given up any foolish hopes of them stopping the pain. It would end only when he did._

____

__

____

__

____

__

____

_The shapes around him spoke, but he understood nothing. He knew only pain, a constant, burning pain that filled his entire existence. He was nothing but the pain. Nothing else was real to him. Nothing else existed while it did. It filled every corner of his mind, chased away all thoughts and memories. Nothing mattered. Nothing was real but—_

_____ _

__

_____ _

__

_____ _

__

_____ _

_The pain spiked._

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

_He didn’t know how it could get worse, but it did. A scream he thought he couldn’t manage tore from his throat. His back arched and heavy hands forced him down again. His vision went dark, and still the pain tore at him. Breathing felt too hard. It hurt, it took energy he didn’t have, and it kept him alive. He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t breathe, and_ still the pain…

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

_And then, the pain stopped._

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

_He thought he was dead. He thought there was no way he wasn’t. But when he opened his eyes, he was still there, surrounded by dark figures slowly coming back into focus, still tied down to the table._

______ _ _

____

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

____

______ _ _

_And he didn’t feel the pain._

______ _ _

_____ _

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

_____ _

______ _ _

_He didn’t feel at all._

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

__He felt the cold surface against his back.

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

_He felt the cold surface against his back. The table they had tied him to—hours, days, weeks, years ago—was still under him. He felt it now, but he still didn’t feel the pain. He looked, something he hadn’t dared to do before, looked at his arm—_

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

__

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

__He couldn’t feel his arm.

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

_He couldn’t feel his arm. He couldn’t feel it, and—his breath rattled in his chest, he choked on it—it wasn’t there. He didn’t feel the pain in his arm, because there was no arm to feel pain._

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

He couldn’t feel—he couldn’t feel his arm, oh God…

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

_The shapes crowded over him, poking, prodding, and he could feel, he could feel again, but his arm was gone, oh god they’d taken his arm._

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

He felt strained muscles in his shoulder and tried to stretch it, tried to ease the discomfort. His arm moved. Something clinked by his head.

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

_They’d taken his arm. They’d taken everything else from him, and now they were starting to take_ him.

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

He couldn’t breathe. Something pressed against his chest, restricting his breathing. He tried to push it off, but he couldn’t move his arm. He felt the thing move, felt warmth coming from it, and—

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

He opened his eyes. Confusion filled him, his heart pounded, and his chest heaved with ragged, gasping breaths. But he could breathe. It was okay.

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

Lance curled against his side. He’d fallen asleep on Shiro’s shoulder, but at some point he’d gotten closer. His eyes were closed, eyebrows creased low on his forehead, and his breathing deep, although a bit shaky. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

Shiro watched him breathe, puffing out little bursts of air between his lips, his chest rising and falling with each burst. He matched his own breathing to Lance’s, slowing his racing heart and calming his still screaming mind.

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

The nightmare had been bad. Shiro hadn’t meant to fall asleep; he figured being imprisoned wasn’t going to equal nice sleep. He hadn’t realized it would be _this_ bad, though. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

His shoulder ached from the strain of being chained to the wall, and he thought maybe that’s what had triggered the whole thing. His upper arm, where the Galra prosthetic met his scarred flesh, had gone numb. He needed to stretch it out, but that would involve standing up, and Lance was still asleep.

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

He glanced down at Lance again. His eyebrows twitched, and his breathing hesitated for a second. Shiro frowned. Lance reached for his swollen, out of place shoulder, but Shiro caught his fingers with his human hand.

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

“Don’t touch it, buddy,” he whispered. His voice was shakier than he thought it would be. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

A whimper escaped Lance’s lips. He curled tighter against Shiro, forehead creased with pain. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

“It’s okay,” Shiro said softly, rubbing his thumb over the back of Lance’s hand. “It’s okay.”

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

Lance shook, shoulders and fingers trembling. His hand clenched and unclenched, and then he cried out again. His eyes shot open, staring blankly ahead of him.

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

“It’s okay,” Shiro said again, even though it was very obvious that it wasn’t. Not for Lance.

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

Lance let out a half-strangled sob. He jerked his hand away from Shiro, who wasn’t fast enough to stop him, and grabbed his shoulder, hurting himself further. His breathing came faster and faster, sharp and quick.

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

“No, come on, Lance.” Shiro took his hand again, trying to keep calm. “Don’t—”

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

Lance made a sound like he was choking. He sobbed, tears coating his cheeks, mixing with dust and blood. “It hurts. Shiro, it hurts so bad.”

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

“I know,” Shiro whispered, rubbing his hand again. His heart ached for Lance, and he hated that he couldn’t do anything for him. “I know. I’m sorry.”

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

Lance cried into his shoulder for several minutes. Shiro let him, running his thumb over Lance’s hand the whole time. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

“It doesn’t stop,” Lance said, his voice cracking. “It just keeps hurting.”

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

Shiro knew exactly how that felt. He held Lance close, as well as he could with only one arm. He wanted to fix it, take his pain away. A dislocated shoulder shouldn’t be this hard to fix. And yet, Shiro couldn’t risk hurting Lance further. With only one free hand, if Lance moved unexpectedly and Shiro lost his grip, he could easily make things far worse than they already were.

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

Shiro knew he wouldn’t be able to handle that.

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

Gradually, Lance’s breathing slowed. He sucked in slow, steady gasps of air, trembling, but not shaking quite as hard as he had been. He lifted his head from Shiro’s shoulder. The black fabric was damp with tears.

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

“You okay?” Shiro asked gently.

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

“Yeah. I…” Lance started to speak, then froze up again. His face twisted with pain, his shoulder twitching seemingly outside of Lance’s control. He choked on his own breath. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

Shiro grabbed his hand again. “Lance. Talk to me, what’s going on?”

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

“I thought it was gonna stop,” Lance gasped, his voice dry and cracking. His eyes were wide, terrified, hurting. “Shiro, I thought it was stopping, and it’s not—”

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

He screamed. He screamed, sharp and tortured, and it terrified Shiro.

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

“Lance! Talk to me, where is it hurting, what’s wrong—” Shiro desperately rubbed his hand, but Lance didn’t even seem to register it. His eyes were blank and unfocused. His shoulder continued to shake, twitching violently. The muscles, pulled and stretched in ways they shouldn’t be, continued to spasm, causing Lance incredible amounts of pain. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

“Can’t breathe,” Lance gasped. He choked again, harsh sobs tearing from his mouth. Shiro moved his hand, rubbing Lance’s back instead.

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

“It’s okay,” he said, trying, struggling to keep his voice calm. “It’s okay. Just breathe, okay? Breathe, Lance…”

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

Sometimes it seemed like Lance could hear him and was responding. Shiro controlled his own breathing, instructing Lance to inhale and exhale with him. _“In… Out… That’s it, Lance, keep it up… In…”_

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

But Lance’s eyes remained unfocused, and in between deep breaths he still screamed. Shiro had to stop rubbing his back to take his hand again, holding it tight to prevent Lance from wrenching it from his grasp and grabbing his shoulder.

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

He heard footsteps outside the cell, momentarily breaking his concentration on Lance. The door creaked open and Shiro looked up at one of the alien creatures who had done this. It was because of them Lance was in so much pain, them and their stupid trap—

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

Lance screamed again, fingers digging into Shiro’s hand, clutching at the black fabric of his glove.

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

“Help him!” Shiro’s voice was nearly a roar and he could hear the panic in it. As soon as he recognized that, the panic in his head increased, screaming. “He’s hurt, he needs help, and it’s your fault—just help him, let me help him—”

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

Without a word, the alien guard set something on the sand-covered floor, turned, and left again, locking the door behind them. 

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

“NO!” Shiro’s scream blended with Lance’s. “Let me go, let me help him, I swear I won’t try to escape, just _let me help him!”_

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

A door clanged further down the hallway, and they were left alone again. Shiro was helpless, Lance was still screaming. Shiro’s _mind_ screamed with the injustice of it all, with the rage of being useless, watching his friend suffer and unable to do a thing about it—

______ _ _

______ _ _

______ _ _

“Shiro.” Lance’s voice was ragged and broken with pain. He grabbed at Shiro’s sleeve, clutching onto the fabric for dear life. Shiro looked down into his eyes, oddly focused, staring right back up at Shiro’s face. “Please. Please, Shiro, just make it stop.”

______ _ _

_He begged them, begged anyone, please just make it stop. Let him pass out, let him die, just make it end please._

______ _ _

_Stop._ Shiro squeezed his eyes shut, blocking out the memory. It wasn’t happening. He wasn’t hurt anymore.

______ _ _

Lance’s back arched, screaming again, fingers digging almost painfully into Shiro’s arm and side. 

______ _ _

_He screamed until his throat was hoarse, giving way to quieter, pathetic—_

______ _ _

_No._ It was over. Stop. He didn’t feel that pain now. The memory was in the past, and the pain was gone.

______ _ _

___It wasn’t for Lance._ _ _

______ _ _

___He shoved the memory away, forced the panic into some distant corner of his mind to deal with later. Right now, Lance was in pain, not him. He needed to take care of Lance first._ _ _

______ _ _

___“Lance.” Shiro tried to get him to look up again, but his eyes had gone back to being unfocused. “Lance, I need you to listen to me. I’m going to try to help you, but it’s going to hurt a lot first._ _ _

______ _ _

___“Worse than now?” Lance whispered._ _ _

______ _ _

___At first, Shiro thought that he’d imagined it because his voice had been so quiet. He hoped it was a good sign that Lance was speaking, and possibly attempting jokes. “It will definitely hurt worse than now. I’ll try to—”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“I don’t believe it,” he mumbled, his head going limp against Shiro’s shoulder._ _ _

______ _ _

___“Stop interrupting me,” Shiro instructed, trying to sound serious. Lance already seemed better, though, and now he felt more confident. “I’ll try to be gentle, but it’s still going to hurt a lot, and if you move at all—”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“Shiro.” Lance interrupted him yet again. “It’s stopping.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___Shiro hesitated. The last time Lance had thought it was stopping, it had come back worse. Lance seemed to recognize the same thing, almost holding his breath in anticipation of the pain._ _ _

______ _ _

___“You were gonna try to pop it back into place, right?” Lance’s eyes were closed, his breath shaky but steady._ _ _

______ _ _

___“Yeah,” Shiro said._ _ _

______ _ _

___“Can you wait just a little?” Lance asked quietly. “It… It doesn’t hurt right now.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“Okay,” Shiro agreed. “But if we’re going to do it at all, it would be better to do it while you’re not—”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“Not semi-conscious and screaming,” suggested Lance._ _ _

______ _ _

___“Something like that.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___They sit in silence for several minutes. Shiro listened to the quiet rasp of Lance’s breath, not as peaceful as when he’d been asleep, but so much better than it had been just a few minutes before._ _ _

______ _ _

___“What did the guard want?” Lance broke the silence, but didn’t open his eyes to ask the question. “I wasn’t really paying attention.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“Dropped something off. Um…” Shiro looked over at the door, finally noticing what the guard had left. “A glass of water and some fabric or something.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“Mm.” Lance moved just a little. “Water. Sounds really good.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___Shiro was in full agreement. “I can’t reach it. I’m sorry.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___Lance sighed. “Would it have killed them to bring it the rest of the way?”_ _ _

______ _ _

___It might have. Shiro would love to have one of them close enough to touch… He shook his head to clear the thought. It wasn’t going to help._ _ _

______ _ _

___After another silent pause, Lance lifted his head. “I’m gonna get the water.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“Lance,” Shiro said warningly. “I don’t think you should move.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“I’m not going to move my shoulder,” Lance promised. “Look, my arm’s gonna stay right here in my lap the whole time. I won’t even try to stand. I’ll just scoot over, grab the water, and scoot right back. Two minutes, tops. I’ll even share it with you.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“Fine.” Shiro grudgingly gave his permission. “But it’s not a race. Take your time, and please be careful.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“Sure, dad.” Lance rolled his eyes, then grinned to show he was joking. It took a bit of maneuvering for him to get started, and he ended up having to use his right arm to move himself along, which complicated things when he got over to the door._ _ _

______ _ _

___With Lance no longer using him as a support, Shiro got to his feet and stretched out his shoulder. Pins and needles pricked all over it as feeling came back. He rubbed at it, trying to alleviate some of the soreness._ _ _

______ _ _

___“Hey, they gave us shirts. How thoughtful.” Lance sat cross-legged on the floor next to the small pile of things left by the guard. He held one of the pieces of fabric in his right hand, then shook it out, the hem brushing along the floor. “Uh, never mind. They gave us dresses.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“They’re probably shirts on the aliens,” Shiro said. “They’re taller than us, after all.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“They have no sense of fashion,” Lance stated, regarding the drab greenish-brown color in disgust._ _ _

______ _ _

___“It’ll be warmer than what we’re wearing now.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“Easy for you to say.” Lance tossed the clothing at him. “You can pull off anything. It’s unfair.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___Shiro smirked. “I thought you were the king of fashion or something. Surely you can make the look work.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“I have good fashion sense,” Lance agreed, picking up the cup of water, then setting it down as far ahead of him as he could reach. “I’m not a miracle worker. This color is garbage.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___Shiro laughed. At the sound, Lance looked up, grinning and hugely pleased with his successful joke. Shiro was just glad he was feeling better._ _ _

______ _ _

___Lance moved back to Shiro, having to move the glass of water ahead of him first and then scoot up to it, move it again, slide along the floor again, until he was back against the wall._ _ _

______ _ _

___“Didn’t spill a drop,” he said proudly, offering the glass to Shiro._ _ _

______ _ _

___“You get the first drink,” Shiro told him. “You earned it.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___Lance didn’t argue. He took a sip, then handed the glass to Shiro. They passed it back and forth for a few minutes, savoring each sip until the glass was half-empty._ _ _

______ _ _

___“We should probably save the rest of it,” Shiro said._ _ _

______ _ _

___“Yeah,” Lance agreed reluctantly. “They’ll probably bring us more. Maybe.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“We don’t know that.” Shiro set the glass on the ground, far enough away that they wouldn’t accidentally knock it over. “Let’s see those ugly clothes of yours.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___Lance made a face. “They’re not mine. I refuse.” He handed the two shirts to Shiro, who turned them over in his hands. They were simply constructed, two pieces of fabric shaped like rough T’s and sewn back to back._ _ _

______ _ _

___“Unfortunately, I’m not sure either of us will be able to put them on,” Shiro said._ _ _

______ _ _

___“Thank quiznak,” Lance said._ _ _

______ _ _

___Shiro rolled his eyes. It seemed to be Lance’s personal goal to use that word in all the worst, incorrect places, ever since Keith made fun of him for it once. “I do have an idea for it, though.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“Burn it?”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“A sling,” Shiro said. “For your arm.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“Oh.” Lance bent his head in agreement. “That makes more sense."_ _ _

______ _ _

___Shiro folded the shirt over, trying a few different methods until he found one that he thought would work, then gestured for Lance to help. “Between the two of us, we have one pair of hands. I think we can make it work.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___Awkwardly, Lance and Shiro knotted the hem of the tunic-like piece of clothing to the sleeves, forming a makeshift sling. It took a few tries before they got it quite right, but it worked._ _ _

______ _ _

___Now came the hard part. Lance turned sideways, his right hand protectively cradling his left arm. Shiro slid the sling into his lap, under his arm._ _ _

______ _ _

___“You’ll have to lift it,” he told Lance. “Bend at the elbow.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___Lance nodded, oddly silent, and took a deep breath. Then, he lifted his arm, wincing in pain as he did. Shiro moved quickly, looping each end of the sling over his uninjured right shoulder and holding both ends in his hand._ _ _

______ _ _

___“You okay?”_ _ _

______ _ _

___Lance nodded. “I’m fine now. Kinda hurt getting here though.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“Sorry,” Shiro apologized. “Can you help me tie this?”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“Can’t really see it,” Lance complained, but did his best to hold one end of the fabric steady while Shiro tied the two together._ _ _

______ _ _

___“And that’s that,” he said when they’d finished. It wasn’t the most skillfully constructed thing, but at least Lance would be able to move without jostling his shoulder now._ _ _

______ _ _

___“Your turn,” Lance said._ _ _

______ _ _

___Shiro gave him a confused look. “What?”_ _ _

______ _ _

___He reached out a hand. “Hand me the water, please.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“Again, what?” Shiro had immediately gone to obey, but now paused. “Why?”_ _ _

______ _ _

___Lance opened and closed his fingers in a grabbing motion. “Just give it to me.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___Still confused, Shiro handed him the glass._ _ _

______ _ _

___Lance grabbed the other shirt, still lying on the ground next to him, and carefully dripped a little of the water on the corner of one sleeve._ _ _

______ _ _

___Shiro frowned. “What are you...”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“Just trust me, okay?” Lance set the water down and picked up the shirt, folding it over his hand. He got to his knees, moving a little closer to Shiro. Shiro started to pull back, then forced himself to remain still._ _ _

______ _ _

___“Seriously, Lance. What are you doing?”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“Tired of looking at the blood on your face.” Lance reached up and gently started to clean the cut on Shiro’s forehead. The slightest bit of pressure stung, and Shiro winced._ _ _

______ _ _

___“Sorry,” Lance said immediately, despite Shiro assuring him that he was fine, and somehow managed to work even gentler._ _ _

______ _ _

___“Lance, this really isn’t necessary.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“Yeah, it is,” Lance insisted. “If you go and get a fever from an infected cut, what am I supposed to do?”_ _ _

______ _ _

___Shiro couldn’t argue with that logic. “Well, you don’t need to be so gentle. At this rate, you’ll be here all day. It’s dried on and not going to come off easy.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“Shiro, I swear.” Lance started to sound impatient. “I will sit here until every bit of blood is off of your face, and I will do it without hurting you at all. Are we understood?”_ _ _

______ _ _

___Apparently Lance had recovered from his earlier ordeal. Shiro gave up. “All right, all right. But... Take a break if your shoulder starts hurting, okay?”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“Okay,” Lance said, although it sounded like he was just saying it to get Shiro to stop protesting._ _ _

______ _ _

___Lance worked in silence for several ticks. Shiro sat patiently as the wet cloth went over every bit of his face. Places that he hadn’t even realized he’d been cut stung sometimes, but he didn’t move. If he showed any sign of discomfort, Lance would somehow find it in him to work gentler, and Shiro wasn’t sure he could handle that._ _ _

______ _ _

___“You think they’re looking for us?” Lance asked abruptly._ _ _

______ _ _

___“I’m sure they are,” Shiro said. He just hoped they wouldn’t do anything stupid. Allura and Coran would keep Keith under control. Hopefully._ _ _

______ _ _

___“Bet Pidge’ll come up with a brilliant plan,” Lance said. “She’ll, like, hack into their weapons and cause them to self-destruct, and then Keith and Hunk will come down guns blazing and break into here.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“Sounds good,” Shiro agreed._ _ _

______ _ _

___“But during the chaos, those doors over there will unlock, and so will the chains on your arm,” Lance said. “So we’ll get out, and be able to take a few of them out ourselves.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___Shiro snorted. “God, that sounds nice.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“I know, right?” Lance paused to drip a bit more water on a clean area of the cloth. Shiro was honestly surprised at the amount of blood left on it. “It’ll be great. We’ll go back to the castle and have a huge dinner. Hunk’s cooking, not Coran’s.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___They lapsed into silence, and then Lance spoke up again, quieter. “I just hope Pidge is all right.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“She’s fine,” Shiro said. “She was conscious while Keith was taking her back to castle. She’s probably out of the healing pod already.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___Lance nodded absently. “Okay.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“Hey.” Shiro set his hand on Lance’s fingers. “It’ll be all right. We’ll get out of here.”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“Oh, I know,” Lance said, almost brushing off Shiro’s concern. “I just told you how we’re going to do it. I was just...”_ _ _

______ _ _

___Shiro looked at him, at the edging worry in his eyes. “Just?”_ _ _

______ _ _

___“Just wondering what they want with us,” Lance admitted. “Why are we even here?”_ _ _

______ _ _

___A very good question. “I don’t know,” Shiro said quietly. He had no idea._ _ _

______ _ _

___He just hoped that, whatever it was, he could convince them to let Lance go._ _ _

______ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: I was originally intending to call this fic "Disarmed."
> 
> I'll see myself out.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Itty baby chapter because not a lot really happens but I wanted to see what was going on back on the Castle.

Pidge stared at the screen, her fingers tapping at the keyboard almost with a mind of their own. Her eyes stung, but she’d been finding it harder and harder to open them after she blinked, so she tried to avoid closing them at all.

Hunk hovered over her shoulder. He didn’t say anything, but she could feel the nervousness radiating off of him. She tried to ignore him and kept working at her project. The planet below them was more tech-savvy than it appeared. Key evidence being that they’d somehow managed to hide four weapons, big and strong enough to shoot a lion of Voltron clear out of the sky, _in plain sight._ None of them had seen the cannon-like blasts until one of them had hit Lance.

And now he was down on that planet, hopefully with Shiro, hopefully still alive… 

Pidge thought maybe it was some sort of cloaking mechanism that hid the weapons until they were being fired, which was the only time any of the paladins had caught sight of them. She’d tried hacking into their systems, but they were very well protected. She’d been here for nearly two hours and was only just starting to make some progress.

Hunk breathed in her ears. Pidge paused, flexing and unflexing her fingers in an attempt to relieve tension. It didn’t work. Instead, the screen suddenly lit up with a bright red pulsing light.

“What does that mean?” Hunk said, his voice high with worry.

“It means they have very good security systems,” Pidge growled, immediately going back to typing. She’d triggered some sort of alarm, so they probably knew she was here now. Not that it was going to stop her. She’d keep looking for a way into their files until someone literally dragged her away from the computer.

Which might be sooner rather than later, she realized. The door behind her opened, and Coran entered with Keith trailing behind.

“Pidge, what’s going on?” Keith asked.

“I just triggered an alarm in their systems,” Pidge said, her voice edged with annoyance. A few more taps, and the red light went away. “There. Fixed. They might not have even noticed me.”

Hunk frowned. “Pidge, maybe you should get some rest.”

“He’s right,” Coran added. “You came straight here from the healing pod. It’s not good for you. You should really go take a nap—”

“I’m not tired,” Pidge said through gritted teeth. Why couldn’t they just leave her alone? She was in the middle of a project, and she wasn’t about to just give up on it.

“Yes, you are,” Keith said. He was right behind her other shoulder now. Great. “You’re just good at ignoring it.” 

“Leave me alone, Keith,” Pidge snapped. “Like you get your eight hours of sleep every night.”

She didn’t look up, but she could feel Keith’s glare. 

“We don’t need to fight,” Hunk said. “But you really should take a break, Pidge. Just for a few minutes to rest and get something to eat. You’ve been here for two hours.”

“And for two hours before that, I was in a healing pod,” Pidge said evenly. “I got rest. I’m _fine.”_

“The healing pods are not a substitute for real sleep,” Coran said. “Your body is still worn down from that hit you took. Your wounds may be healed, but you need sleep—”

“And we need Lance and Shiro back!” Pidge whirled around on her chair so she could glare at all three of them. “I am not leaving this chair until I’ve done everything I can to get them home. It’s bad enough that I missed two hours of time I could have been looking for them, and that Keith had to get me back to the castle instead of helping Shiro, and—”

“Hey,” Keith interrupted, a slightly bitter tone in his voice as he continued. “Stop that. Shiro made the decision to go alone. And Lance made the choice to pull ahead of everyone else instead of waiting like Shiro told him to.”

“So it’s Lance’s own fault that he got shot?” Pidge challenged, and even Hunk shot Keith a dirty look at the implication.

“That’s not what I meant,” Keith said angrily. “I’m just saying that if Lance had listened for once, he and Shiro wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“Oh, that’s great, coming from you.” Pidge got to her feet, folding her arms and drawing herself up as close to Keith’s height as she could manage.

“Yeah, come on, Keith.” Hunk sounded upset. “You think this is all Lance’ s fault, because he was a little reckless?”

“Did he deserve to get shot, then? Because he didn’t match up to your perfect standards?”

Keith raised his hands as if to defend himself. “I never said—”

“You did,” Pidge interrupted, her voice venomous. “You said that because of Lance, we’re stuck in this mess.”

“Not cool. Lance never meant to put anyone in danger—”

“I never said that! I was just trying to—”

“I suppose it’s Lance’s fault that I got shot too, huh?”

“Paladins, I think you’re getting off topic—” Coran attempted to calm the argument, but it was too late.

“So what, we should just sit around waiting for Lance to save himself?”

“Right, because it’s _his_ fault?”

“I’m just as worried about them as you are! I want to help—”

“Then help and stop shoving the blame on Lance!”

“I wasn’t shov—”

"Okay, can we not yell—”

“You don’t even care about Lance! All you care is that he apparently dragged Shiro into th—”

“That’s not true! I—”

“—and obviously it’s all Lance’s fault that we’re stuck here—”

“—you’d just let me finish talking—”

“—can’t even admit to being wrong—”

“—for crying out loud, Pidge! Just—”

“—and now we can’t even find—”

“—was just trying to help you—”

“—maybe it’s all your fault, Keith—”

“—maybe it is all yours—”

_“Enough!”_

The room fell into complete silence. Pidge hadn’t even seen Allura enter. She stood a few feet away, hands in fists and her face flushed from yelling. Pidge didn’t think she’d ever seen her look so angry. 

Keith stared at the floor, avoiding Pidge’s eyes. Hunk looked even more nervous than he had before the argument, and now he mumbled something about using the restroom and ran.

Pidge dropped back into her chair, waiting for Allura’s scolding. 

“What exactly is going on here?” Allura asked, her voice cool and controlled. Pidge sensed the underlying anger under it.

“I was—”

“Keith said—”

Allura cut them off with a single hand motion. “One at a time. Pidge.”

“I was working on a project,” Pidge said, cooling off enough to summarize the argument without getting angry all over again. She was still mad, but she wouldn’t start yelling at Keith again. Hopefully. “Keith said it was Lance’s fault that he and Shiro got captured, and I got mad, so we yelled at each other.”

Keith pressed his lips together, but didn’t speak until Allura turned to him. “I didn’t say it was Lance’s fault. I was _trying_ to say that it wasn’t _Pidge’s_ fault. It was Lance’s choice to pull ahead and no one else’s, and… And it was Shiro’s choice to go after him alone. And none of us should be blaming ourselves for it.”

Pidge still bristled, but managed to bite back something snarky about blaming Lance for it instead.

Allura let out a small sigh. “And Hunk—”

“Hunk wasn’t part of it,” Keith said, and Pidge said at the same time, “Hunk didn’t do it.”

“Very well.” Allura took a seat, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I’m disappointed that the disagreement turned into yelling. You both need to learn to control your emotions.”

Keith ducked his head, but Pidge still felt angry. It wasn’t quite as hot as earlier, just a quiet resentment. She knew Allura was right. She just didn’t like that she was right.

“I understand that this is incredibly stressful for the both of you,” the princess continued. “We are all feeling upset at losing Shiro and Lance—”

“We haven’t lost them.” The words burst out of Pidge’s mouth before she could stop them. “We’re getting them back.”

Keith gave her a silent look of agreement. For the first time since getting out of the healing pods, Pidge didn’t feel like strangling him.

“Of course we are.” Allura quickly amended her statement. “And we all need to work together to bring them home as quickly as possible. That means no more arguments. Understood?”

Pidge and Keith nodded.

Coran cleared his throat. “It also means taking care of yourself.”

Pidge’s head whipped up and she shot him a glare. He didn’t seem to catch it, or maybe just purposefully ignored her.

“The argument began when Hunk, Keith, and I all told Pidge she should take a break from her work at the computer and get some rest,” he told Allura. “Apparently, she feels guilt for spending time in the healing pods when she could have been looking for Shiro and Lance and working to bring them back.”

Pidge was really sure she hadn’t said that. But judging by the look Keith was giving her, it had been pretty obvious anyway. 

Maybe she did need to work on controlling her emotions.

“Pidge,” Allura said, her voice gentler than it had been before. “You can’t expect yourself to do unreasonable things. You were barely conscious when Keith brought you back. You needed the time to heal so that you could help after. It wouldn’t help Lance and Shiro at all for you to become so sick that you needed to spend even longer in the pods.”

Pidge knew she meant well. She really did. But now her fingers were itching to get back to work. All this talk about how it wasn’t her fault, how she was doing all she could, reminded her that right now, she wasn’t. She could be facing the screen right now, hacking their systems, finding if there were any cameras in the base, see where Shiro and Lance were, see if they were okay—

An alarm went off behind her.

She nearly fell out of the chair, then whirled around to face the computer. It wasn’t flashing like it had earlier. This was a different alarm. Her fingers flew over the keyboard, and she felt the three others press against her shoulder. Lectures were over in favor of something more pressing.

Hunk got back just in time, sliding a plate of snacks he must have gathered for Pidge onto the desk and crowding into the rest of the group. “What’s that?”

“It’s a communication they just sent out,” Pidge said. Her lips pressed into a thin, grim line.

“To the Galra?” Keith asked. “For reinforcements?”

“No,” Pidge said. “To us. They know we’re here and they want to talk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love all of my space children equally and it was super hard to write that argument ;A; 
> 
> Next chapter is back to Lance's POV!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout-out to Cardigan for proofreading all of my chapters at midnight and screaming at me for torturing her children, even though she doesn't watch the show. And then creating all of my lizard-alien OCs out of emojis. She's pretty cool.
> 
> This update's a bit later than usual because of a short story contest I entered. I decided five days before the deadline that I wanted to enter, and spent the whole weekend working on an (original) story to submit. It was fun, but I was so ready to go back to fanfiction by the time I was done!
> 
> Anyway, on to the story. Blood and torture and panic attacks, oh my. Also the tiniest slightest amount of language towards the end. It's pretty much nothing (the language, anyway. The blood and torture is pretty intense). But I'm paranoid so yeah. There's your warning.

The sound of metal clanging on metal startled Lance awake. He’d barely been asleep; just dozing, lulled by the sound of Shiro’s even breathing. He hadn’t admitted it—Shiro would have freaked—but all the effort of cleaning the dried blood from Shiro’s cut had worn him out. It seemed pretty dumb that something so small could tired him so quickly, but all the same, as soon as he stopped moving, he crashed. He’d let himself relax against Shiro’s shoulder, and immediately his eyes had closed.

Now, however, his eyes flew open as a group of alien guards entered the cell. Shiro tensed under him and Lance felt his own shoulders tighten. A twinge of pain shot through his neck and arm.

Shiro got to his feet. Lance shifted onto his knees, still not completely trusting his legs to hold him up.

“What do you want?” Shiro barked.

There were three of the lizard-like aliens. One moved to the front, flanked by the other two.

“Step aside,” it said in that strange clicking voice.

Shiro didn’t. In fact, he moved a little closer to Lance, as if he was shielding him from them with his own body.

Lance appreciated the gesture, he really did. But Shiro was going to get in trouble if he kept this up, and Lance couldn’t handle the idea of Shiro being hurt because of him—

“Step aside,” the alien repeated. “Do as we say, and neither of you will be further injured.”

That had definitely sounded like a threat. Lance looked up at Shiro, nervousness pricking at him. “Shiro…”

Shiro’s human hand curled into a fist. “You’re not touching him.”

The guards didn’t take the time to answer. The first alien lunged forward, and almost as quickly, Shiro’s hand shot out. His Galra weapon may have been restrained, but Shiro’s human arm was almost as deadly. He went straight for the guard’s throat, but the lizard-aliens were faster than they looked, as Lance had already learned. It ducked out of Shiro’s reach, then caught his fist in its own hand. The second guard closed in on Shiro’s unprotected right side, while the third—

Lance realized half a second too late that the third guard was not after Shiro.

He tried to duck out of the way, get to his feet, use his free arm to defend himself, _anything,_ but his attempts stopped the instant the guard touched his shoulder.

An explosion of pain drove the air from his lungs and sent a burst of bright colors and dark spots into his vision. The cell spun as the guard hauled him to his feet, dragging him away from Shiro.

“No,” Lance gasped, trying to pull out of the guard’s grip. “Please—”

“Stand down, paladin,” the lead alien hissed. _“Now.”_

Shiro let out a scream that sounded more like a roar, full of rage and the pent-up helplessness that Lance had seen his eyes ever since he’d woken up the first time. The guard holding Lance dug his fingers tighter into his shoulder, and now Lance’s scream mingled with Shiro’s. 

Shiro was still fighting. He’d wrenched his wrist free. Blood flowed down his face from the cut on his forehead, reopened and destroying all of Lance’s earlier hard work. The lead alien unclipped the short, metal weapon from its belt.

_“Stand down!”_

“Shiro, stop!” Lance’s voice was high with pain and fear. The guard held tighter to his injured shoulder. His vision swam. “Please, Shiro, please stop…”

And suddenly, the chaos silenced. The guard loosened his grip on Lance, who shuddered in a deep, aching breath. 

Shiro’s eyes were wide. His chest heaved with each breath, but he didn’t make a single move to fight back. He looked at Lance, who’d somehow slipped to his knees again—he didn’t remember when; it was all a pain-filled blur—and his mouth started to open.

The leader of the alien guards drove its weapon into Shiro’s stomach. 

“Shiro!” Panic ran through Lance as Shiro doubled forward, silently choking for breath. The alien slammed him back against the wall, pinning his wrist against the stone and half-crushing it with the force of the movement. The second guard moved forward, fastening something around Shiro’s wrist. They were too close to him, and Lance couldn’t see. Shiro had barely moved on his own, hadn’t made a sound at all.

Then Lance made out the quiet, ragged gasps of his breathing, and Lance’s own breath came a little easier.

The second guard moved back and unlocked the chains around Shiro’s Galra arm with a click. The arm fell to his side, and a flash of pain crossed Shiro’s eyes. 

“I trust you will behave yourself now,” the lead guard said, not even out of breath. It took a small silver thing out of its pocket, holding it out as if he was showing Shiro. “This controls that new cuff on your wrist. Unless you want to feel what you just felt all over again, you _will_ do as I say.”

There was no opportunity for disagreement. The alien spun on its heel and walked through the cell door. The second guard gripped Shiro’s shoulder and shoved him forward. Lance was pulled to his feet again and the guard marched him out of the cell.

Lance snuck a look at Shiro. “You okay?” he asked quietly.

“Fine.” Shiro did not look fine. The blood from his cut had mixed with his sweat, coating most of his face. His eyebrows were furrowed as if he still felt the pain from the alien weapon. Which was possible, Lance thought, grimly remembering being shocked with it during his capture. “That weapon really packs a punch, doesn’t it?”

Before Lance could answer, the guard shoved Shiro’s shoulder roughly. “No talking.”

The guards led them down a long hallway, made of the same stone material as the cell and most of the floor covered in sand. Lance was starting to seriously hate the stuff. He didn’t know how he’d handle going to the beach after this.

Lance wondered where they were taking them. They probably weren’t escorting them back to the castle and apologizing for any inconvenience. Lance wanted to hope for the best, but a little part of him worried that maybe they were just headed for execution.

He glanced at Shiro again. Shiro stared straight ahead, his eyes unfocused. He still looked like he was in pain, but now he started to look distant too. Lance really hoped it wasn’t a flashback. He wanted to reach out and touch Shiro’s shoulder, tell him to breathe and that it would be okay, but he didn’t dare move. Not with the guards this close and that control device in one of their hands.

They stopped in front of a door. It slid open to reveal a room full of… tech equipment? Geez, Pidge would have a field day in here. Computer screens lined the walls, along with a ton of really advanced-looking machines. Lance had no idea what they did. Pidge probably would know. 

As they were pushed inside, Lance felt a little bit of comfort that they probably weren’t going to die. Not in a room full of expensive equipment. Probably.

The door slid shut behind them. A few other lizard-aliens stood inside the room, and one of them stepped forward. This one was taller than the rest, dressed in clothes that were actually a color other than that disgusting green-brown. A dark brown vest hung over a deep blue tunic, belted around the waist. The alien crossed the room, its gait a graceful, swaying sort of walk that looked distinctly feminine. It—She?—stopped in front of them, looking down at Lance and then at Shiro.

“I admit, I expected a bit more from the paladins of Voltron,” the alien said, voice slightly less grating than the rest of its kind. Lance was pretty sure this was a she, and he had to admit, she was attractive in a sadistic lizard-alien sort of way. She reached out one hand, catching hold of Lance’s chin and tipping his head back. Lance tried to pull away, but she tightened her grip, sharp claws digging into his skin.

“You are small,” she told him. “Here, you would be too small to be a warrior. Too small to be of use for anything.”

A bubble of annoyance rose in Lance’s stomach. “Yeah, well, where I come from, nobody would like you either.” It was pretty much the lamest comeback he’d ever used, but it was all he could come up with at the moment.

Apparently it was good enough to earn him a jab in the—thankfully uninjured—shoulder from the guard behind him. He went quiet again as the female alien released his chin and turned her attention to Shiro.

“And you,” she said, her voice becoming marginally more interested. “Still small, but you have the makings of a warrior. I see it on you.” She ran a finger over the side of his face, leaving her scaly hand stained with Shiro’s blood.

Lance didn’t think she was attractive anymore. Shiro hadn’t responded to her touch; he continued to stare straight ahead, jaw tight. Lance didn’t think he was having a panic attack. He seemed in control of himself.

Then again, Shiro had always been good at hiding what he was feeling.

The she-alien, who appeared to be the leader of this whole group, waited a moment longer, studying Shiro. Then, she turned away, gesturing over her shoulder to the guards. “Bring them closer. Kyadhk, unmute the channel with the Castle of Lions. I am ready to begin negotiations.”

Lance’s head jerked up. Out of the corner of his vision, he saw Shiro’s chin snap upwards as well at the mention of the castle. The guard behind Lance prodded his back, and Lance willingly moved forward.

One of the aliens tapped something into one of the computer screens, then nodded at the female alien. She cleared her throat. “Klit’ni to the Castle of Lions. Are you still there?”

A momentary pause and then a voice came through the speakers. “We are still here. Where are our friends?”

There was no visual connection, but the voice was very obviously Pidge. Lance stared at the screen. 

“They are here.” She looked back at Shiro and Lance. “Feel free to speak, paladins.”

“Pidge.” Lance spoke up first, relief at hearing her voice filling him. “Are you okay?”

“Lance! Thank god you’re all right—wait, why are you asking me if I’m okay? I’m fine.”

“Shiro said you got hit.”

“Oh. Right.” She paused again, as if she’d forgotten that detail entirely. “I’m fine. Couple hours in the healing pod and I’m all better. Is Shiro there?”

“I’m here.” Shiro’s voice was quiet, but he’d managed to scrape every bit of pain out of it. Lance didn’t know how he managed it.

“Are you guys okay?” Hunk’s worried voice spoke up. “We’ve been so worried about you…”

“We’re okay,” Lance said. “Could be better. But we’re alive.”

The she-alien interrupted their catching up. “Your paladin friends are very brave, I’m afraid. They’re not doing quite as well as they want you to believe.”

There was a beat of silence, and then Keith’s soft, angry voice came through. “If you’ve done anything to them, I swear, no weapon will stop me from—”

“Keith.” Shiro spoke again, a warning tone in his voice. “Not going to help.”

The she-alien walked over to Shiro. The guard standing behind him stepped back to allow her room, and then held out the little silver thing from earlier.

Lance realized what was about to happen half a second after she took it from his hand.

“I know you want your friends back,” she told the group on the Castle, who couldn’t see what was going on here. “I want you to be able to have them back. All I’m asking for is a little trade.”

“What do you want?” Pidge sounded suspicious and angry. Both appropriate responses.

“I think it’s fair to ask.” The alien gripped Shiro’s chin, forcing him to look at her. Lance’s shoulder spasmed. No, no, no… “A simple trade—the paladins for their lions.”

Stunned silence from the castle. 

“No,” Shiro said. “We can’t let the lions—”

The she-alien pressed a button on the device.

Shiro screamed. He crumpled to his knees, eyes wide and terrified, breath sharp and ragged. 

“Shiro!” Lance tried to pull away from the guard holding him back. His shoulder spasmed again. The guard gripped tighter, and Lance froze, dark spots crowding his vision and his breath catching in his throat. 

His ears filled with buzzing noise—his friends calling Shiro’s name, scared and confused, Hunk crying, Shiro’s muffled gasps of pain. He couldn’t see right, couldn’t hear right; the pain filled him, no, no, no, he couldn’t do this again, _please…_

“Stop.” Allura’s voice, cutting through the noise, sharp and demanding. “Whatever you’re doing to him, stop.”

“It has stopped,” the alien said. She turned away from Shiro’s shaking, curled up form, as though he no longer deserved her attention. “For now.”

Lance drew in a shaky breath. What she’d said was true for his own pain as well. The guard had relaxed its grip on his shoulder, and for now, the muscles had relaxed and he could see, breathe, and hear again.

“We cannot agree to such a trade,” Allura said. “But perhaps we could interest you in something else. If you return our paladins safely, we will consider allowing a treaty between your planet and Voltron, protecting your people from the Galra so long as you abide by the rules of the treaty.”

“We need no protection from the Galra,” the alien sneered. “I am interested only in the lions. But I will sweeten the deal. Give up the Black Lion, and I will return both of your paladins.”

“How about this sweetened deal.” Keith’s angry voice entered the exchange. “You let Shiro and Lance go, and I don’t murder every single living thing on your stupid planet.”

“Keith.” At least three voices quietly scolded him from the other end. 

“I will give you time to consider it.” The alien turned back to face Shiro, fingering the silver device. “Not too much time, though. Not if you want both paladins returned safely.”

She gestured to the alien by the computer to end the communication and at the same time, pressed the button again. Shiro cried out as the channel closed. Lance knew that was intentional. The last thing his friends would hear from the connection was Shiro’s screams. 

He hated her for manipulating his friends like this. He hated her for so casually hurting Shiro. He hated her so much for all of this.

She knelt in front of Shiro, whose eyes darted around the room, shoulders trembling, blood dripping from his chin. Lance wanted to scream for her to get away from him, to rush over and protect Shiro himself. But the guard was starting to anticipate when Lance would try to break away, and its fingers were already tightening on his shoulder.

“You are strong for one so small, paladin.” She studied Shiro’s face, tipping her head from side to side. “A current of this strength is usually painful enough to drive a fully grown Klit’ni warrior to unconsciousness. Yet here you are, still awake. You have been through worse, yes?”

Shiro didn’t answer.

“Forgive me for this,” she said easily, as though she really didn’t care to be forgiven at all. “I am just curious.”

And she pressed the button again.

Shiro did not scream this time. His mouth opened in a silent cry, but no sound came out. His shoulders stiffened, back arching, and then in a moment that made Lance’s stomach flip, his eyes rolled up and Shiro fell.

Lance screamed Shiro’s name. He was completely still. Lance felt sick. 

The she-alien stood up. “Take them back to the cell.” She handed the metal device to one of the guards and turned away, clearly bored of her now-unconscious plaything. Lance’s blood roared in his ears. He wanted nothing more than to put the cuff from Shiro’s wrist on her own and see how many presses of the button it took for her to pass out from the pain. 

The guard behind Lance pushed him forward. He walked numbly, watching the two other guards who had brought them here dragged Shiro ahead of him. 

They went back through the door, the long hallway, back to their cell. Lance never once took his eyes off of Shiro. Shiro never once showed signs of waking up. Lance took some small comfort in seeing his chest move as he breathed.

Back at their cell, Shiro was unceremoniously dumped on the floor, and then Lance shoved in after him. The door clanged shut and the lock clicked.

Lance scrambled to Shiro’s side. His white hair was stained with blood, plastered to his forehead. Crimson dripped from between his lips.

“Oh, god,” Lance whispered. “Oh god, oh god, oh god… Shiro, please wake up…”

He had no idea what to do. Was there anything he could do? He needed Coran and the castle’s healing pods.

“Shiro, I’m sorry, I don’t know what to do—” Lance choked on a sob stuck in the back of his throat. He found the shirt he’d used earlier to clean Shiro’s face. The water had been knocked over in the commotion of getting them out of the cell. Lance thought back to how awake and alert and _alive_ Shiro had been then, completely unarmed and one of his actual arms chained to the wall, but still fighting in an attempt to protect Lance.

And now Lance had no idea how to take care of Shiro.

He tried to clean the blood from his face. The cut had mostly stopped bleeding, and as he went he realized a significant amount of the blood was coming from Shiro’s mouth and nose. He didn’t know what that meant, or where it was coming from, or how much danger Shiro was really in. He was completely useless—

The alien’s words from earlier sprang into his mind. _Too small to be of use for anything._

Tears leaked down Lance’s face. “Shiro, I’m sorry, please, please, wake up… I don’t know what to do, I’m sorry…”

He’d gotten as much blood off as he could. Shiro’s chest rose and fell, but his eyes remained closed. Lance sat back, curling up around his knees. 

“Please be okay,” he whispered, feeling another burst of pain in his shoulder. “I can’t do this without you.”

He slipped his hand into Shiro’s. The cuff around his wrist was locked in place. The skin around it was dark red, looking almost burned. Lance really wished they still had some of the water left. Maybe they’d get more…

His shoulder continued to twitch painfully. Lance knew it was only a matter of time before the spasms grew too painful for him to breathe. He tried not to think about it. He only got through last time because of Shiro, because of Shiro holding his hand and telling him he’d be okay, and now Shiro—

Shiro’s fingers twitched. Breath catching in his throat, Lance looked up. Shiro’s frown deepened, and then he coughed, a new spatter of blood coating his lips.

“Shiro,” Lance said, his voice cracking with just one word. “Oh, god, Shiro, please be okay—”

“Nnh.” Shiro’s eyelids fluttered. “Hurts like hell.”

Lance choked back a sob. He threw his arm around Shiro’s shoulder and cried.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's another short chapter! Longer than chapter four, though. The benefit of writing short chapters is that I get to update more often.

Lance had fallen asleep in Shiro’s lap. Shiro’s head was tipped back against the cell wall, eyes closed but awake. His Galra arm was limp at his side. The cuff still rendered it unusable, but it wasn’t chained to the wall. The lack of strain in his arm was a small comfort, and even if he couldn’t bend his elbow or hand, at least he could let it rest in his lap, half-curled around Lance’s sleeping form. 

After Shiro woke up, he very quickly realized that Lance was slipping into another bout of pain from spasms in his shoulder. There had been a terrifying moment where Shiro couldn’t quite get himself awake, couldn’t quite ground himself enough to comfort Lance, despite hearing his cries through a fuzzy sort of haze. Then, he’d been aware of Lance’s fingers on his shoulder, of something sticky on the ground under him and the metallic smell of blood, and that had been enough to scare him awake. He’d figured out later that it was his own blood, not Lance’s, and his panic had gone down. But Lance had still been whimpering and struggling to breathe, so Shiro had sat up and pulled Lance into his lap, holding his hand and stroking his hair until the pain stopped and Lance had dozed off.

Lance had cried a lot of tears. Shiro wasn’t sure his black undersuit would ever be dry again. He didn’t care, though. Lance had been through too much already; being frustrated at him for crying would be the worst thing Shiro could do.

The wet fabric did make him a little colder than before, so now he let his arm drape over Lance, absorbing that extra bit of body heat. Lance shifted slightly, settling again as he let Shiro’s arm settle across his chest. Shiro still hurt. His entire body ached and he knew he had blood on his face, but this was the most comfortable he’d been during their imprisonment. He tried to avoid moving now, not wanting to wake Lance and ruining the moment.

He looked down at Lance, curled half on the floor and half on Shiro’s legs and sound asleep. His right arm was wrapped around Shiro’s metal one, accepting it as comfort from Shiro even if he didn’t actually have any control over it. His left arm, still in its sling, was clutched tightly to his chest, gently rising and falling with each breath.

Shiro didn’t exactly have two working hands, but at least they were both free now. In the midst of Lance’s episode, everything in him had screamed to just put the shoulder back in joint now, but he’d held back. He knew how dangerous it could be if his hand slipped, if Lance pulled away… Lance could end up losing his arm altogether, and Shiro didn’t know if he could live with that. Better to wait until… Until Shiro got Lance out of here. Until Coran and the healing pods could do a better job than Shiro could. Lance could hold on until then.

Shiro let his head tip back against the wall again. He felt like he’d spent too much time asleep lately, but he was exhausted. Lance was warm and quiet, his breathing rhythmic and comforting. Shiro blinked heavily, once, twice, and then he let them close. He fell asleep a few seconds later.

 

_His arm kept aching, phantom pains in a limb he didn’t have. He tried to clench his fist, stretch his muscles, just get it to stop, but the pain continued. God, it was stupid—there wasn’t anything there to feel, but it hurt._

_The pain grew, spreading from his arm into his shoulder, into his neck and back and his left arm, burning and pulsing in his wrist. He was on his knees, struggling for breath. It burned, tearing through him, intense and white-hot. The pain was everywhere. Everything hurt, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t think—_

_Someone was screaming. Was it him? He didn’t know; he couldn’t tell anymore._

_The pain subsided, just for a moment, and he realized it wasn’t him screaming. He gasped in air, desperate for relief from the pain. The air was hot, stinging his throat and burning his lungs. And the screaming continued—not from his own lips._

_He heard the screaming, someone far away, and he felt someone else’s pain. A phantom pain from someone he didn’t know._

_His own pain flashed again. He couldn’t breathe, throat blocked by the pain in his arms, his chest, his head, everywhere. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block it out. Light pressed behind them, brilliant and burning._

_A voice entered his mind. “You have the makings of a warrior.”_

_“No.” Shiro choked on tears and pain. He tried to raise his arms, cover his ears to block out the voice, but he only had one arm, and the pain kept it at his side. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t think around the pain—_

_“You will be a great warrior,” the voice rasped in his head, and Shiro saw yellow eyes, boring into him. No, no, no, no, and then he was saying it out loud, a string of shaking desperate pleas._

_“No, no, no…” He felt hot tears running down his face, felt them burn into his skin. Everything was pain. The screaming in the distance grew stronger, and Shiro felt their phantom pain again, and then suddenly he felt the person who was screaming, felt their presence too, and he screamed._

_“No, no, no!” Lance, god, it was Lance and they were hurting him, they were hurting Lance just like they were hurting Shiro, no, no, no…_

_“You will be our great warrior,” and Haggar was there, and Shiro watched as her lips curled into a cruel smile. “Our Champion.”_

 

Shiro shot bolt upright, a scream still on his tongue. His chest heaved and he sobbed for breath as the world crashed into place around him. He felt tears on his face. He felt sand underneath him. He felt the stone wall at his back, felt Lance beside him, felt Lance's hand on his shoulder. And he still felt the coursing, burning, aching pain everywhere.

Shiro slumped forward, burying his face into his forearm, propped up on his knees.

Lance knelt beside him, one hand gently rubbing his back. “It’s okay. It’s okay, Shiro, you’re okay.”

Shiro squeezed his eyes shut, but tears leaked out anyway. He tried to stop his shoulders from shaking, tried to stop crying, but he couldn’t—he couldn’t stop seeing Haggar’s eyes, hearing the words from their alien captor, feeling the pain, and Lance—

Lance was okay. Lance was right here, and he was okay.

Shiro took a deep breath, shaky and unsure. The pain subsided. He sat up a little, dragging his hand across his eyes, avoiding Lance’s gaze. His hand came away stained slightly pink. Shiro looked at it for a moment, then let his hand drop. Lance’s hand stayed on his back, a gentle, comforting presence. A reminder that he was awake and that Lance was all right.

“Sorry,” Shiro said quietly, his voice breaking. “I didn’t mean to wake—”

“I’m going to stop you there,” Lance interrupted. “You’re not going to apologize to me for having a nightmare. Okay?”

“I—”

“Seriously. Don’t.” Lance shifted position, sitting right beside Shiro and looking up into his eyes. Shiro met his gaze for a moment, then looked away. Lance sighed. “Shiro. Are you okay?”

“’M fine,” Shiro mumbled.

“Convincing.” Lance reached out with his good arm and took Shiro’s hand in his. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Shiro shrugged one shoulder. “Not really.” He mostly just wanted to forget it had ever happened.

Lance was quiet, but he held onto Shiro’s hand. His thumb traced over the back of Shiro’s hand, again and again, and Shiro recognized the action as something he’d done for Lance during both of his episodes. It felt so… he didn’t know. Different? Strange? Not necessarily uncomfortable. Just… He just wasn’t used to it. He was supposed to take care of Lance, and now it felt like Lance was the stronger one. Shiro stared down at their hands for a long moment.

“They hurt you.”

Lance’s head jerked up. “What?”

“The nightmare.” Shiro turned his head, looking at Lance out of the corner of his eye. He couldn’t quite get himself to make full eye contact. “It was about you.”

“Oh,” was all Lance said, continuing to rub circles into Shiro’s hand.

Shiro took another shaky breath. “They hurt you, and I couldn’t do anything to stop them. I… I couldn’t save you.”

The circles stopped. Lance moved again, turning to look once more into Shiro’s face. When he spoke, his voice was serious, but gentle. “Shiro. It wasn’t real, okay? They didn’t hurt me. You didn’t let them. I know you’re worried about us. About me. But it’s going to be okay. You’ve kept me safe and that’s probably really impressive.”

“You have a dislocated shoulder,” Shiro pointed out drily.

“Yeah, but other than that.” Lance wrinkled his nose at being proven wrong. “And I mean, I lost my balance and fell. Not your fault.”

Shiro was quiet.

“Hey,” Lance said. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”

Shiro chuckled, dry and hoarse. “No, I promise. That’s my job. I get to tell you that it’s going to be okay.”

“We can promise each other,” Lance said. “Teamwork.”

“Teamwork,” Shiro agreed. Lance leaned against his shoulder again, and Shiro let himself relax. It was okay. Lance was okay.

For now. The nightmare still had Shiro on edge. He knew he wouldn’t feel truly okay until Lance was safe— _really_ safe, back in the Castle of Lions with the rest of the team. He needed to get them out of here. Or at least Lance.

He just wasn’t sure how.

The quiet was comfortable. Shiro made the most of it, knowing that at any second a guard might come in, or Lance’s shoulder might start to spasm again. 

The quiet was broken a few seconds later by a loud growling sound. Shiro twisted his neck to look at Lance, who had a solemn look on his face.

“I’m too hungry to even feel embarrassed,” Lance said sadly. 

Shiro laughed at him, and Lance pretended to be annoyed, playfully poking his arm. His Galra arm. Which was already metal to begin with, and currently had no sensation whatsoever. 

“I have no idea what you were trying to accomplish with that,” Shiro said, poking him back. 

“I don’t know either. It’s the lack of food,” Lance complained, sprawling back on Shiro’s lap again. “It’s getting to my head. I think this is the end, Shiro.”

“Lance,” Shiro said, looking down at him. “It’s been one day at the absolute most.”

Lance let out a pathetic whine. “That’s, like, three meals. Three meals! Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I’ve missed, like, some delicious space pancakes with space maple syrup, and space bacon, and—”

Shiro rolled his eyes, but Lance plowed on, describing each meal in full detail. By the time he got to dinner, even Shiro felt his stomach gnawing inside of him.

“…and pizza, with lots of cheese and thick crust and loads, absolute loads of pepperoni—”

“Okay, stop.” Shiro clapped a hand over Lance’s mouth. “I can’t take it anymore. Please stop.”

Lance licked his hand. Shiro yanked it back, making a face of disgust at the same time Lance did. 

“I regret that,” Lance said, sitting upright. “That was terrible. I’m so sorry.”

“I hope you know you just tasted a day’s worth of sweat, dirt, sand, and—”

“Stop!” Lance put his hand over his eyes. “I’m sorry. Please.”

Shiro grinned at him. “Still hungry?”

“Unfortunately?” Lance groaned. “Yes.”

Shiro was about to tease him again, when a sound outside the cell stopped them both.

A door clanged in the distance, and then footsteps marched their way to Shiro and Lance’s shared cell. Lance’s mouth pressed into a thin line, all traces of humor gone. Shiro got to his feet.

A pair of alien guards unlocked their cell door. This time, Shiro knew better than to fight back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so hungry right now. lance why


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Shiro is an idiot. A very lovable, self-sacrificing idiot."  
> -my beta who doesn't even watch the show

The guard shoved Lance to his knees. Beside him, Shiro was forced into the same position. They were in the same room they had been brought to earlier, and as far as he could tell, they were in for the same routine as well. The alien-lady stood by one of the screens, baring glancing over her shoulder at them as they entered.

There was no introduction, no moment of conversation with Pidge. The she-alien simply spoke to the screen. “I have given you plenty of time to consider my offer. Have you reached a decision, or are you in need of further convincing?”

Allura’s voice answered. “I believe I made myself clear last time we spoke. We will not be bargaining with the lions. However, I can offer you—”

“I want nothing else you have to offer,” the alien interrupted. “My patience is growing short.” She fingered the small metal controller in her hand, and Lance swallowed hard. Shiro didn’t react, but there was something off about his expression. It wasn’t the same unfocused mask he’d kept up last time. There was another aspect to it now, something determined, and… calm? Lance had no idea how he looked so calm. Lance was freaking out.

“We will not be giving you the Black Lion,” Allura says, her voice measured and cool. “And moreover, if you continue to refuse your cooperation, I cannot guarantee your safety. We have been more than generous in allowing you time to correct your mistake. If you do not return our paladins safely, _immediately,_ your people will be considered enemies of Voltron and we will not be hesitant to attack with any force necessary to rescue them. This is your final chance.”

A strange clicking sound came from the alien, rumbling and sharp. Lance realized she was laughing, and the sound sent a shudder down his spine.

“You think I fear you?” The alien leaned closer to the screen, although there was no video connection between them. “Your _tiny_ warship poses no threat to the Klit’ni. We have remained neutral for the last ten thousand years, refusing to ally with any side and preserve our own people. But that time of indecision has passed, and we are now joining with the stronger force. The winning force. The Klit’ni will not be sent cowering underground any longer. We do not fear your _Voltron.”_

“Think about what you are doing,” Allura urged. “The Galra do not care about your people. They will use you and enslave—”

“Silence!” The alien—Klit’ni?—slammed her fist down. “The bargaining is at an end. You will give me the Black Lion, or you will never see the _paladins_ alive again. I swear this. Until I have the lion, they will not leave this planet with their heads on their necks. The Klit’ni are superior. Our weapons are advanced. Our warriors are strong and undefeatable. The force of the Galra Empire stands behind us. You cannot defeat us, Princess of Altea. Your tiny, weak pilots will not win. They stand no chance. We will take the lions!”

A heavy silence fell over the room. Lance’s heart pounded in his chest, the Klit’ni leader’s threat still sounding in his ears. He really didn’t want to get sent back to the castle in multiple pieces.

The alien whirled around, her fingers clenched tightly around the controller. Her slitted yellow eyes narrowed, gaze settling on Shiro. Lance’s shoulders stiffened. He didn’t want to watch this again, he couldn’t handle seeing it a second time…

Before she could raise the device, however, Shiro spoke.

“Turn off the channel to the castle.”

The Klit’ni blinked, stared at him, obviously surprised at being ordered to do something.

Allura sounded equally surprised. “What? Shiro, why?”

Shiro continued to look straight at the alien. “I may have an offer that would interest you, in return for our safety.”

“Shiro, this is not your decision,” Allura said in a warning tone.

“And why not?” Shiro’s expression hadn’t changed. Lance watched his lips press together, still determined and collected. “I am the leader of Voltron, Allura. Not you.”

A smile curled the edges of the she-alien’s mouth. “End communication with the castle.”

“No, wait—”

Allura’s voice cut off. Lance stared the black paladin. “Shiro, what are you…”

“Take the other one back to the cell,” the alien said, not looking up. “We do not need his distractions.”

“Stop, I want to stay!” Lance tried to pull away from the guard, but he was dragged to his feet. A bolt of pain ran through his shoulder as he was pulled to the door. Shiro remained kneeling on the floor. He looked up and caught Lance’s eye.

“It’s going to be okay,” Shiro promised.

“No, no, don’t—” Lance kicked at the guard, tried to dig his heels into the ground. Shiro gave him a small smile.

The door slid shut.

____________________________

Lance had already paced every inch of the cell twice, and still there was no sign of Shiro. After the guards had thrown him back in here, he’d yelled until his voice went hoarse, slamming his fist against the door until it jarred his shoulder too badly. After that, he’d resigned himself to pacing. His shoulder continued to throb, so now he was sitting, trying to calm the pain down.

What was Shiro thinking, leaving Lance on his own? Maybe it was selfish, but Shiro was the one thing Lance still had. He hadn’t been able to feel Blue’s voice in his head since his capture. The pain in his shoulder had distracted him from thinking about it too much, and when the pain stopped he could talk to Shiro. But now he was completely alone.

He was alone, and he was worried. What was Shiro doing? What could he possibly have to offer the Klit’ni? He pulled his knees up to his chest, wrapping his good arm around them. He hoped they’d bring Shiro back soon…

He hadn’t realized he’d dozed off until the clang of the metal door startled him awake. He shot to his feet before he realized what was going on, unsteady and reaching out his hand to catch hold of the wall for balance.

Two guards enter the cell, pushing Shiro ahead of them. Blood matted his white hair to his forehead, dripping down the side of his face. One of the alien guards shoved his shoulder, and Shiro stumbled forward, spilling into a heap on the cell floor. For a second, Lance saw Shiro the last time this had happened—bloody and unconscious, barely breathing, and Lance’s own breath caught in his throat.

Then Shiro was on his feet again, whirling on the guards before they had a chance to leave the cell again. He struck out with his human hand, a savage growl tearing from his throat as he lunged forward. Before he could land the hit, one of the guards raised a hand, and Lance saw a flash of metal. The alien pressed the button on the controller. Shiro stopped almost immediately, tripping again and falling to his knees.

“Stop!” Lance moved towards them. “Leave him alone—”

“Stay out of this, Lance,” Shiro snarled. He staggered to his feet, shooting Lance a dark glare. Lance froze in place, something shifting inside of him. Shiro had already looked back at the guards, but Lance still saw the anger in his eyes when he’d looked at _him._

The short moment that Shiro had taken to look at Lance was all the guards needed. The first one grabbed his arm and twisted. Shiro let out a cry of pain through gritted teeth. The guard slammed him back against the cell wall, pinning his arm with one hand. The other hand pressed against Shiro’s throat, cutting off Shiro’s already-muted scream. The second guard was on Shiro’s other side, snapping the chain still hanging from the wall around Shiro’s Galra prosthetic.

Shiro wasn’t done yet. He kicked out, sweeping the first guard’s feet out from under him. The alien lost his balance and fell, freeing Shiro’s hand. Shiro took his opportunity, lunging for the guard’s throat. His fingers closed around the alien, and fear lit up in its eyes—the first emotion Lance had seen either of them show.

And then it disappeared as the second guard pressed the button on the controller again. No, not pressed—the alien held it down. Shiro crumpled, screaming, the chain around his metal wrist holding him partially upright. Lance’s stomach twisted. The guard scrambled to his feet, and not until both guards were at the door of the cell, well out of Shiro’s reach, was the button released.

The screaming stopped, gave way to a harsh, gasping, painful breathing that was almost worse to listen to. Shiro hunched forward, curled around the cuff causing him so much pain. Blood dripped from his chin. Lance tore his gaze away from Shiro as one of the guards spoke.

“You have half a varga to clean him up,” the guard with the controller said, speaking to Lance. “Vaktla will be ready for him again after that.”

And with that, they were gone.

Lance stared after them, shell shocked for just a moment. Then, he ran forward, slamming his fist against the door again. “What the hell?! What do you mean, half a varga to clean him up before she’s _ready for him again?_ What did you do to him?”

“Lance.” Shiro’s voice was quiet, and Lance ignored him.

“Get back here!” Lance screamed. The guards did not answer. A door clanged farther down the hall. “Clean him up with what? A dirty rag I’ve already used twice? What’s _wrong_ with you people?”

“Lance, stop.”

“You can’t just do this to us!” The guards were gone. Lance knew that. But he kept screaming anyway. “You can’t keep hurting him! You can’t—”

“Lance!”

_“What?”_ Lance whirled around, facing Shiro, chest heaving. Immediately, his anger towards Shiro disappeared. He had raised his head, though his arm was still pulled against himself protectively. The skin around the cuff was a bright, blistered red. Blood dripped freely from his nose and mouth, and Lance thought he saw a streak of crimson by his ear.

“It’s no use for you to get this worked up,” Shiro said, voice tired and quiet. “It’s o—”

“Don’t you dare,” Lance interrupted. “Don’t you dare try to tell me it’s okay. This—” He gestured to all of Shiro, his chained arm and bloody face and burned wrist. “—This is not okay.”

Shiro didn’t answer. Lance snatched the shirt that had once been muddy green from the floor. It was mostly dark red with Shiro’s blood now. He clenched it in his fingers, throwing himself down on the cell floor beside Shiro.

Lance searched for a bit of fabric that wasn’t completely stained already and started to clean Shiro’s face. Shiro started to pull back at first, but after a glare from Lance, gave up and held still.

“I’m sorry for snapping at you earlier,” Shiro said after a moment. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just didn’t want you getting hurt.”

“It’s fine,” Lance muttered, brushing the apology off as he wiped the stain of blood from Shiro’s ear. It hadn’t really scared him. Well, okay, it had a little bit. But it wasn’t that big of a deal.

There was silence again, and then Lance started to work on Shiro’s forehead and let out a curse. Shiro’s shoulders jolted in surprise.

“What?”

“Your cut opened again.” Lance felt his fingers tighten around the rag. “This is too much, Shiro. They can’t just keep doing this to you. I can’t sit back and watch them hurt you again.” He felt the anger boiling over again, but he didn’t care. “What did they do to you? What are they planning to do? Why can’t they just leave us alone?! Why do they even care—”

“Lance, just stop!” Shiro’s voice came out sharp, and he gripped Lance’s wrist in his hand, staring at him with dark, angry eyes. “I screwed up. I made a mistake. I’m sorry.”

Lance stared back at him. There was something in Shiro’s eyes, past the anger, past the pain he obviously still felt. There was something like guilt. Like somehow, he thought Lance’s anger was directed at him.

“Shiro, no, I didn’t mean that. It’s not your fau—”

“It is,” Shiro interrupted. “I messed up. I thought I could get… though I could do it. I didn’t. I made a mistake and now everything’s worse. God, I…” Shiro let go of Lance’s hand, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I-I’m sorry, I thought I knew what I was doing—”

“Shiro, stop.” Shiro was slipping into panic and Lance tried to catch him. “Just tell me what happened.”

“I thought I could pull it off,” Shiro whispered. “I tried to make a deal with her. I offered information, stupid things that wouldn’t make a difference but seemed important, and I thought that would be enough…”

“To get us out of here,” Lance said.

“I…” Shiro shook his head slowly. “I acted like that’s what I wanted, at first anyway. And then I dropped a few hints, here and there, about… About me. And the arena. And—”

Lance felt sick. “You told her you were the Champion.”

“She somehow didn’t know that yet.” Shiro still had his hand on his face, half-hiding his eyes, but now his fingers shook. “But now she does. She knows what kind of reward there’d be for me, the black paladin and Zarkon’s Champion. And she knows that I know… I know enough to be valuable to herself as well.”

Realization hit Lance. “Shiro, please tell me you didn’t do what I think you did.”

“I had to,” Shiro said bitterly. “I can’t just let you stay—”

“Forget me for one quiznaking second!” Lance got to his feet, and Shiro just looked up at him. “My god, Shiro, you—You can’t just throw yourself under the bus for me. Just so I have a _chance_ of getting out of here, because let’s face it, there’s a pretty good probability that they’d just grab the lion and shoot us anyway. You didn’t _have_ to. You could have asked me first. We could have come up with a plan together, you know, as a _team_. We could have come up with something that works out for both of us, not just mindlessly putting yourself in danger because _maybe_ you’ll be taking the fall for someone else—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Shiro interrupted, his voice sharp. “It doesn’t matter, okay? I screwed it up and it didn’t work. Neither of us are getting out. I’m sorry.”

Lance stared at him.

“She’s not interested in making any sort of deal anymore,” Shiro said, voice hoarse. He looked at the ground, his hand pressed over the lower part of his face. “She… She just wants…”

“She just wants you,” Lance said numbly. “And she already has you, so what’s the point of bargaining with anyone?”

Shiro stared straight ahead.

Lance sat down again. Part of him wanted to take Shiro’s hand, hold it until the tears glinting in his eyes disappeared, but he couldn’t. He felt too hollow to move.

“I’m sorry,” Shiro whispered. “God, Lance, I’m so, so sorry.”

“No, stop it.” Lance wrapped the piece of cloth around his fingers again, gently moving Shiro’s hand away from his face. Blood stained his fingers now, but Shiro didn’t even seem to notice. “We’ll figure this out. There’s gotta be something that we can do…”

Except there wasn’t anything for them to do. Even if there was, it was only a matter of minutes before the guards showed up again to drag Shiro off again to do god-knows-what to him. Shiro was chained to the wall, Lance had only one functional arm, and they had nothing at their disposal save a blood-stained shirt. The full hopelessness of the situation hit Lance in one big wave, twisting his stomach and making his shoulder twinge. They hadn’t had a lot of ideas before, but they hadn’t been on quite as much of a deadline. Now…

Now, they were out of options and out of time.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's shoutout goes to galaxy_saturn for chatting with me the entire time I was writing it which honestly gave me the inspiration to write 3K in one sitting.  
> Also to wingedflower, who wanted to see Lance put himself in harm's way for Shiro. Blame wingedflower. I'm just doing what my readers want.
> 
> Also! I probably don't need to keep warning for violence and stuff (I do kinda have that in the archive warnings), but there is a lot of pretty intense torture in this scene. I think this is going to be as intense as it gets it that aspect, so if you think it's going to bother you, maybe sit this chapter out. Thanks for all the amazing responses I've been getting on this! You guys are great. <3

Shiro didn’t speak for the rest of the time they had together. Lance tried out a couple of jokes, miserable attempts at lightening the mood, but they sounded fake and forced, so he stopped. Shiro kept staring straight ahead.

Lance had barely finished cleaning Shiro’s face when he heard footsteps from down the hall. A brief flicker of fear crossed Shiro’s eyes and his hand, now resting in his lap, twitched. Lance’s fingers tightened around the blood-stained fabric. But then the fear was gone. Shiro’s gaze hardened. His fingers curled into a fist.

“Lance.” Shiro’s voice was quiet, shaking for a fraction of a second before the emotion disappeared.

“Yeah?” His stomach twisted at how Shiro was masking his fear, probably trying to protect him. He was really tired of being protected, and especially of _needing_ to be protected.

The guards stopped just outside the cell. Shiro met Lance’s eyes, gaze steady and calm. “Don’t do anything stupid. Stay out of this.”

The door swung open with a click. Lance got to his feet, half-turned to face the guards. Attacking the guards the second they’d entered the cell probably counted as stupid.

The first guard stared down at Lance. “Step out of the way.”

Lance took in a deep breath, curled his hand into a fist.

“Lance,” Shiro said with a warning tone.

For a brief second, Lance just stared back at the guard. Then, he took a step to one side. The guard pushed past him, and the second followed close behind, the controller device in its scaly claws. Lance squeezed his hand tighter, digging his fingernails into the palm of his hand. He felt his throat tighten, breath heavy with anger.

Shiro shakily got to his feet as the guards approached. Maybe that was the wrong thing to do, maybe they didn’t want him to move at all until he was ordered to do so, or maybe the aliens were just messed up enough to enjoy seeing Shiro in pain. Lance wouldn’t put it past them.

Whatever the case, the instant Shiro stumbled out of his slumped kneeling position, the second guard had tightened his grip on the controller, pressing down on the button. Shiro collapsed, held half-upright by the chain on his wrist, loud, harsh sobs choking out of his mouth. They didn’t stop, and Lance’s vision blurred. The first guard moved towards the chain, but the second guard was still there, just holding the button down…

Lance couldn’t take it anymore.

A cry of his own tore from his throat. “Leave him _alone!_ ”

The alien started to turn, but it didn’t have a chance. Lance leapt forward, barreling into it with his one good shoulder. The impact jarred the dislocated one, but he ignored the sudden flash of pain. Lance twisted, kicking out and knocking the alien off its feet. The alien reached out, grabbing Lance’s arm as it fell. Lance down with him. There was a metallic clatter as the device hit the ground.

Lance scrambled to his knees, lunging for the controller. His fingers closed around it, clutching the metal device and staying far, far away from the button on one end. He whirled around, still on one knee and fully aware of the two guards who were likely solely focused on him now. He hadn’t exactly thought through this far—

The first guard’s foot connected with Lance’s side. He lost his balance, tried to catch himself with his left hand and remembered with a flash of pain that his left arm was not in good condition. The controller fell, skittered across the floor. Lance reached for it—

Something slammed into his side, chest, stomach, back—everything was a sudden blur of pain. Another impact as his head hit—the wall? The floor? He couldn’t tell—and then his shoulder, and everything was pain. His arm, his neck, his shoulder, head, back, _everywhere_ was alight with screaming, burning pain. Lance’s vision went black.

He heard someone shouting. Shouting his name, and then there was a strangled coughing sound and the shouting stopped. A different someone gripped his wrist, and Lance heard himself, a mumbled, pathetic whimper. His shoulder _hurt._ His arm had fallen out of the sling, though he still felt that draped around his neck. Every time he moved, or the guard moved his arm, a fresh wave of pain hit. He felt nauseous and he still couldn’t quite see. Everything was a blur of discolored light and blurry shapes.

A quiet clicking sound came as something tightened around arm. The guard dropped his hand, but the pressure around his wrist stayed. Lance blinked, desperately wanting to just pass out until the pain was gone.

His vision swam and his hearing faded in and out as the pain in his shoulder came in waves. He gritted his teeth, determined not to make a sound, but that was all he could manage. He couldn’t get his eyes to focus, although he was vaguely aware of feet moving around him, voices speaking in rushed, clicking tones. He caught a few words here and there—Vaktla, paladins, bring them…

Rough hands lifted him from the ground. His arm slipped off of his chest, his fingers scraping against the sandy cell floor and sending miniature shockwaves through his shoulder. The pain spiked and Lance gasped in a sharp breath. He couldn’t move his arm, couldn’t get it back in the sling and out of harm’s way. He couldn’t breathe, his mind filled with panic and pain, his chest and throat tightened—

He thought he might have blacked out again, but he couldn’t tell. The guards dragged Lance… somewhere. He didn’t know. He cracked his eyes open, letting just a sliver of the dim, artificial light cut through the pain. Another guard walked behind him, and he caught sight of Shiro’s boots stumbling forward as he was pushed along.

The next few minutes seemed a lot longer, a blur of burning stabs in his shoulder every time his arm was jostled. He tried to keep his eyes open, tried to focus on Shiro’s face. He wanted to get up, tell the aliens he could walk, just to ease the pain a little bit, but he kept slipping. He drifted, in and out of consciousness, until he was abruptly dropped. The sudden, sharp impact forced the breath from his lungs, and his eyes widened.

Shiro knelt beside him, his eyebrows furrowed in a mixture of concern and pain. “Are you okay?”

Lance struggled to breathe, but he pushed the words out anyway. “Yeah. Guess, uh… guess that counted as stupid.”

Shiro didn’t respond. He reached out towards Lance’s arm, probably going to try to get it back in the sling. Before he could touch him, however, a dull buzzing sound came from the cuff on Shiro’s wrist. A flash of pain crossed Shiro’s eyes and he snatched his hand back, almost as if he thought somehow it would hurt Lance just by being so close.

Now that he wasn’t being moved at all, Lance was starting to feel a little better. They were in a different place than they’d been brought to before, smaller and with bare stone walls rather than the tech equipment. Several guards stood around the room, as well as the she-alien leader.

Lance’s shoulder throbbed, a steady, aching pain, but it wasn’t quite as intense. He started to sit up, slowly and shakily. His left arm twisted awkwardly and he froze, breathing hard. Using his right arm, he held it against his chest, biting down on his tongue so hard he was sure he’d taste blood. As he sat up, he caught sight of the thing causing pressure on his right wrist.

A cuff. Just like the one around Shiro’s.

Lance drew in a shaky burst of air. Shiro was still watching him, worry etched all over his face, so Lance tried to smile. Before he could gauge the results of his reassurance, however, a shadow fell over them.

Vaktla stood over them, her scaly arms crossed over her deep blue tunic and a scowl set on her lizard-like face.

“Compassion is not a trait unique to your species,” she clicked, bending down condescendingly. “However, I must say, the both of you exhibit it to an extreme. It’s almost sickening.”

Lance glared at her. “Leave Shiro alone.”

“Lance,” Shiro hissed. Lance ignored him. He didn’t care. He was tired of sitting back and watching.

The she-alien studied them for a long moment, her gaze unreadable. Then, to Lance’s surprised, she laughed. “All right, then. I’m sure there are ways to find what I want without torturing your _Shiro._ ”

Lance hated the way she said his name, twisted and mangled in her clicking language. He hated a lot about her. If given a piece of paper and ten minutes, he thought he could fill it up twice with everything he hated about her, and still have some points left over.

Vaktla straightened up, snapping her reptilian fingers at one of the guards. The one closest to Lance stepped forward, holding something in his hand—a controller.

Lance’s stomach twisted. Shiro’s eyes widened.

“So tell me, paladin.” Vaktla leaned over Shiro, casually tracing a finger over the scar on his nose. A shudder ran through Shiro’s body, but he didn’t move. “How do the bonds between paladin and lion work? Do you control the lion, or does it control you? How…” Here she paused, a smile creeping across her face. “How could you pilot it all the way back to your ship, yet still be here on the planet yourself?”

Lance’s head snapped up and he stared at Shiro. “What?”

“I don’t know the science,” Shiro said, his voice flat. “The bonds just work. That’s all.”

Lance continued to gape at Shiro. He’d piloted the black lion, while not inside? How was that even possible?

The alien folded her arms again. “That doesn’t answer my final question. Tell me how you piloted the lion from the ground.”

Shiro stared straight ahead. Then, ever-so-slightly, shook his head.

Vaktla made a noise of disapproval. “Very well then.” She gestured towards the guard with the controller. The alien turned it over and pressed the button.

There was a brief moment, right as its finger hovered over the end of the controller, that Lance felt a surge of panic. He saw Shiro again, gasping and crumpled on the ground, blood running down his face and chin—

Then he heard a buzzing sound in his own ears, and he realized he didn’t need to worry.

At first, he didn’t really feel the pain so much as just the buzzing, the crackle in his ears, the way his heart jumped uncomfortably, a dull, twisted ache in his chest. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get his lungs to work, couldn’t really get _anything_ to work, and a flash of panic filled his mind.

After that, the pain kicked in, and he screamed. He didn’t mean to; he meant to keep his mouth shut, grit his teeth and bite his tongue, but he didn’t seem to have control over that anymore. Every bit of him hurt—his shoulder, his head, his neck, chest, arms—oh _god, _his arm hurt. The skin around the cuff was hot, so hot, and when Lance looked down it was bright red, already puffy and starting to blister. The guard had already let go of the button, but Lance still felt the effects of it. He shook, struggled to get his breathing under control.__

__In the distance, he heard Shiro, panicked and rambling. “Stop, please, don’t do this to him, it’s not his fault, don’t—”_ _

__“Tell me how you piloted the black lion,” the she-alien repeated, voice harsh. “Now.”_ _

__“I don’t know, I just did.” The shaky tone in Shiro’s voice cut into Lance’s mind, worrying him and making his stomach turn with guilt. He hurt so much, and Shiro was hurt, and Lance was the one who had gotten them into this mess in the first place… “It was just… I just held my connection with Black and saw what she was seeing, while I was still on the ground, and I had to get her back to the castle with Blue—”_ _

__Shiro was here because he’d had to choose between Blue and Lance—between a lion and its paladin. And somehow, Shiro had managed to choose both. The guilt in Lance’s stomach stabbed further._ _

__“You could do it again. Feel your connection again, bring the lion here.”_ _

__Shiro barked a harsh laugh. “If I could do that, Lance and I would already be out of here. Trust me.”_ _

__Vaktla scowled. “It is not a choice. Bring the lion here.”_ _

__“I _can’t._ ” Shiro glared right back._ _

__For a tense second, the two stared at each other. Lance caught his breath, trying to calm his racing heartbeat and pounding migraine._ _

__“Very well.” The she-alien held out a hand to the guard. It set the controller in her hand and she turned it over, resting a finger lightly on the button._ _

__Lance sucked in a gasp of air, trying to brace himself. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad the second time around—_ _

__It was just as bad. The burned skin on his wrist screamed in pain, his headache pounded. Everything blurred around him. He screamed at first, then ran out of breath and couldn’t quite get enough air to make any sort of noise. Something wet dripped down his face, and then he tasted the metallic tang of blood between his lips. Black spots crowded the edge of his vision._ _

__It hurt, it hurt _so much_ and he wanted it to stop. He heard Shiro and Vaktla, their voices watery and faraway. The floor underneath him stopped feeling real, and suddenly he couldn’t really feel much of anything. Even the pain started to slip away. His vision blacked over completely. He felt a sort of numbness take root in his arms and legs. He was so tired now; he let his eyes close…_ _

__Abruptly, something shook him awake. The feeling rushed back into him in one sudden, painful moment, and his breath stuck in his throat. He was lying curled on his side, wrist clutched to his chest. A shadow stood over him. Lance grimaced, started to shift his position, looked up at—_ _

__—At Shiro, who now held Lance’s controller in his hand. His chest heaved, his Galra prosthetic hung limp at his side, and he was angry._ _

__“Don’t touch him,” Shiro hissed._ _

__One of the guards rushed forward. Shiro dropped the controller and crushed it under the heel of his boot, leaving it sparking and mangled on the ground. Lance admired his efficient work. He wished he’d thought to do that earlier when he’d gotten hold of Shiro’s._ _

__In one fluid motion, Shiro twisted the first guard’s arm, kicking its legs out from beneath it and flinging it across the room. He whirled to face a second guard, ready to take them out too—never moving away from Lance—when Vaktla struck._ _

__She’d gotten the controller somehow, and a tap of it was all that she needed to stop Shiro. He froze, face twisting and fist clenching with the sudden pain. Lance felt sick. Now he knew exactly what Shiro was feeling, and it made it that much worse._ _

__“Perhaps I was wrong about you.” Vaktla practically crooned the words, stepping closer to Shiro. He turned, lunged for her, but she was faster. She stepped to one side, pressing the controller again and watching in a twisted sort of amusement as Shiro fell to his knees. “Perhaps you do not have the makings of a great warrior. Perhaps you already are one.”_ _

__Lance wanted to get to his feet, stand up against her. But he couldn’t move, couldn’t get any part of him to respond around the pain. All systems were offline, and Lance could only watch._ _

__Shiro stayed on his knees as Vaktla spoke. “Tell me, _great warrior._ What is of more value to you—your lion, or your friend? The safety and hope of your entire race, or the life of one person you care about?”_ _

__Shiro growled, low in his throat, and turned on her again, but it was a feeble attempt. Vaktla didn’t even dodge, simply tapped the button to keep Shiro on his knees._ _

__“It is not an easy choice, I know. It’s one I’ve had to make myself. No matter what you choose, there will be consequences. You cannot win, paladin. You cannot have both. And if you do not choose quickly, you will not have either.”_ _

__Shiro’s eyes were closed. Vaktla moved closer to him, knelt down and tipped his chin upwards, and his eyes shot open. “Answer me, Champion. What is your choice?”_ _

__There was a moment of complete silence, and then Shiro attacked without warning. His last half-attempt at attacking Vaktla must have been some sort of decoy, because now he struck with a ferocity that startled Lance. Teeth bared, Shiro wrenched out of her grip and lashed out, slamming his fist into the side of her face. She staggered back a step. Shiro got to his feet, dashing forward._ _

__Vaktla was ready. Rather than use the controller, however, she simply caught his fist in her own hand, twisting until Lance heard a crack and Shiro gasped. She spun, kicking Shiro in the stomach, and as he doubled forward, she kicked his feet out from under him. Shiro fell hard, landing on his back and then curling around his stomach and injured wrist._ _

__“I admire your spirit, paladin. I truly do.” She didn’t even seem out of breath. “But even you must know that there is no third choice here. The only third choice is no choice at all.”_ _

__Shiro wheezed, coughed. “You will never get the black lion. And I will never help you with anything.”_ _

__Vaktla did not smile. She looked down at him with an unreadable, grim expression. “We will see.” She handed the controller to another guard, taking his weapon—a long staff—in return._ _

__Lance forgot how to breathe for a moment. He wanted this to end. Could this be a nightmare? A really long, really horrible nightmare? He’d wake up in the castle, shaken but all right, and he’d find Shiro and Shiro would be all right, and then he’d find Hunk, and Hunk would hug him and maybe make him the space equivalent of hot chocolate and find him a blanket and—_ _

__He almost started crying then. Everything hurt too much. It was real, and he might never see Hunk again._ _

__Vaktla stepped closer to Shiro. Shiro rolled to his knees, holding his wrist awkwardly against his side. She spun the staff experimentally in her hands, a practiced tight circle._ _

__Lance squeezed his eyes shut. He didn’t want to watch this. Tears pressed at the back of his eyelids, forcing their way through._ _

__A loud blaring sound filled his head. His right hand went up, pressing against his head and trying to cover his ears. It was loud, so loud, and his head ached…_ _

__Vaktla cursed loudly. “Now what?”_ _

__There was no response for a moment. Lance forced his eyes open. It was some sort of alarm, apparently. It wasn’t helping his headache at all, but it seemed to be helping Shiro at least for the moment._ _

__Vaktla let out a long, inconvenienced sigh, then cursed again under her breath. “Take him back to the cell. I will deal with this.”_ _

__The guards started to move towards her, but she stopped them. “Not him. The blue paladin. _He_ will remain with me.”_ _

__The alien hands reached for him, and Lance tried to pull away. No, no, no, he wasn’t going to leave Shiro again. He was staying, or Shiro was coming back with him. He kicked at the guards, but it did nothing. They lifted him off the ground, and his arm hit the ground again. He bit back a scream._ _

__The last he saw of Shiro, he was struggling to get to his feet again. Vaktla spun her staff once more, then slammed it into Shiro’s side and throwing him against the wall on the far side of the room. There was a crack that Lance could hear even from outside the door, and then Shiro went completely still._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really did mean to have this posted yesterday... But... that screenshot of Matt and Shiro messed me up guys... I haven't been able to focus because of them ;A; (they're so beautiful my sons)


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter kind of takes place during chapters seven and eight, from Keith's point of view back on the castle. There's a little bit of "recap" from the end of chapter seven, but I don't think there's really any content to worry about in that aspect.
> 
> One thing I will warn for! Keith accidentally hurts himself. It's not a big deal (at least not to him), but the way he thinks of it after the fact might be... a little triggering, especially as he implies that it's not the first time he's ever hurt himself. If you think that will be a problem for you, just skip the paragraph that starts with "A little part of him didn't mind that..."
> 
> Thank you all again for the lovely comments! I'm still blown away by the great feedback I've gotten on this. <3

Keith stalked back and forth across the hallway. Pidge sat with her back against the wall, arms crossed and legs folded in front of her. Hunk stood beside her, looking nervous enough for the rest of them.

Allura had kicked all three of them out of the control room. Pidge had squawked in indignation, and Keith backed her up, but Coran assured them that he could handle the controls. Hunk was only one who hadn’t argued. He seemed almost relieved at not having to listen to… to _that_ again.

Keith didn’t blame him. The last communication had been hard on all of them. At first, they’d been relieved. Just hearing Lance and Shiro’s voices had been a comfort. But then... Then things had gotten so much worse. Shiro’s tortured screams still haunted Keith, and guessing by the looks on Pidge and Hunk, they were hearing them too.

And so, Allura had apparently decided to handle round two on her own. Now the three of them waited out here. Keith silently paced, wondering what was going on inside with each step, hoping that Shiro and Lance would be okay, hoping that this was going well… Hoping that Allura would convince them. They’d all agreed that they couldn’t just hand over the black lion. Shiro would never forgive them, for starters. And as far as they could tell, the alien race—Klit’ni, Coran said, an ancient and typically peaceful race—was allied with the Galra. Peaceful. Keith had snorted at that, and he felt the silent agreement from Pidge and Hunk.

“Would you stop that?” Pidge’s voice snapped Keith out of his thoughts. 

Keith turned to face her. Arms still crossed over her chest, she glared at him.

“What?” Keith mirrored her position, folding his arms. 

“Your pacing is driving me crazy.” She yanked her glasses off, wiping at them furiously with the hem of her shirt.

“Sorry for being nervous,” Keith muttered. He didn’t sit, but he’d stopped pacing for a moment at least.

Hunk looked even more on edge than he had been. “We’re all nervous. It’s okay.”

“He’s making me _more_ nervous,” Pidge said. 

Keith didn’t answer, just ran a hand through his hair. He turned away, irritation joining the overwhelming nervousness inside of him. Stepped away, putting distance between Pidge and himself, then turned back and walked closer again.

Pidge made a growling sound in the back of her throat. “You’re doing it again!”

“I’m sorry!” Keith threw his hands up. “What else do you want me to do? Sit and do nothing?”

“That’s all we can do!” Pidge snapped. “We’re stuck until Allura gets back, okay? Just sit down and wait.”

“Sure, okay. Sit down and wait.” Keith threw himself on the floor. “Just sit here and wait while Shiro and Lance are being _tortured._ Nothing we can do.”

“Keith, c’mon—” Hunk started, but then the door to the control room slid open. Keith was on his feet in an instant. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Pidge do the same. 

Allura brushed past all of them, hurrying down the hallway, ignoring Pidge calling, “What happened? Are they all right?”

“What’s going on?” Keith twisted his neck to watch her disappear from view, then turned back to look at Coran. The Altean looked paler than usual. He avoided Keith’s gaze.

“Coran.” Hunk’s voice was surprisingly calm. “What happened in there?”

“The… The negotiations did not go well,” Coran said finally. “You three had better come in and sit down.”

#

None of them had really slept since Shiro and Lance were captured, short of Pidge’s brief time in the healing pods. Keith was running mostly on anxiety at this point. Pidge never slept anyway, and Keith wasn’t sure Coran needed sleep at all. Allura had disappeared after the communication with the Klit’ni and Keith hadn’t seen her since. Now Hunk was asleep on one of the chairs in the control room, having accidentally dozed off while Coran talked. Nobody had the heart to wake him up. 

Coran left to find Allura, and now it was just Keith and Pidge. It was late and Keith was exhausted, but he was just as determined as Pidge to find something that could help Shiro and Lance. Half-draped over the back of her chair, Keith watched Pidge tap away at the keyboard.

“S’what’s the plan?” Keith asked, his words starting to slur together.

“Picked up a couple camera feeds,” Pidge said, her voice as dull and tired as Keith’s. “Just trying to pull them up, and maybe we can get a visual on Lance and Shiro. Maybe. If they’re even in an area that has a camera.”

Keith had complete faith in Pidge’s abilities. If there was any way they could get into those cameras, Pidge could do it. But a little part of him worried about what they’d see when they did get the cameras. Shiro had sounded… had sounded pretty rough. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what they’d done to him.

His fingers squeezed the back of Pidge’s chair. He had to know. 

“Got it,” Pidge said in quiet triumph. “Here’s the communications room, where they were when we talked to them.” She enlarged the screen so Keith could see the room. It looked fairly large, although that was harder to tell on camera, and it was full of holoscreens and advanced technology. It was also empty.

“They’re not there,” Keith said.

“Yeah, I kind of doubt that they keep their prisoners with their computers.” Pidge scrubbed a hand over her face. “I’ll check the other feeds. We’ll find them.”

Pidge pulled up feed after feed. A few times they found shots with some of the Klit’ni, but there was no sign of either Shiro or Lance. Then, Pidge opened a camera feed of a tiny, bare room. A barred door was visible on the far side of the screen.

“It’s a cell,” Keith said. 

“They’ve gotta be keeping them there.”

He hummed in frustration. “But it’s empty.”

“There’s more cameras in the same general area,” Pidge said. “Maybe one of those…” She trailed off without finishing the sentence, but Keith got the idea. He tapped his fingers against the back of the chair while she pressed a few keys, pulling up another nearly-identical feed, and then another, and then—

A cell exactly like the other three, but in this one, a small, dark figure curled up against one wall. 

“It’s Lance,” Pidge said, her voice rising with the burst of energy from their small victory. She was right—it was Lance, although he looked terrible. The camera quality was low and the dim light made everything that much harder to see, but Keith could still make out dark bruises on his face and a sling around his left arm. He wondered if that whatever had happened to his arm had been during the crash, or if the aliens had done it. Honestly, either way, he was still going to blame them for it.

Keith frowned. “Where’s Shiro?”

“I don’t know.” Pidge left the feed open, although Lance wasn’t moving. “Maybe they’re keeping him in a different cell.” She went through two more cameras in identical cells, but both were empty. Refusing to give up, she kept going, looking through every single camera feed she could find, but Shiro wasn’t in any of them.

She slumped back in the chair. They both watched the unmoving feed from Lance’s cell for a moment, trying to process.

“Coran said he was trying to negotiate when they cut contact,” Pidge said, her voice small but attempting an optimistic note. “Maybe he’s just in a room without a camera talking things over.”

“It’s been hours, Pidge.” Keith’s voice rose and he heard Hunk shift position behind him. He lowered his voice. “Anything could have happened to him in that time.”

Another beat of silence, then Pidge sat up. “I’ll go through the cameras again. Maybe we just missed him.”

Keith was getting impatient. Now that he could see Lance, small and unmoving, and knowing that Shiro was in very real danger, the helplessness he’d been feeling all day intensified. “If you can get into their cameras, couldn’t you hack their weapons systems? Shut everything down so we can just blast our way in?”

“I wish,” Pidge muttered. “All of their firewalls and security systems would take days to get through, if I even have the skill level to get through them at all. These people have had ten thousand years to develop their technology. I’m not that much of a genius.”

Keith blew out all of his breath. “There’s got to be something we can do.”

“I’m looking, Keith. I’m looking.”

He leaned over her shoulder, eyes flicking back and forth between Lance’s cell and whatever camera Pidge currently had open. Lance was definitely asleep; Keith could see the rise and fall of his chest, but he hadn’t moved a bit since Pidge had accessed the feed.

Then, something caught his attention.

“Pidge. Pidge, look.”

Pidge turned her gaze to the other feed. Lance’s head jerked upwards, looking at the door, and then he shot to his feet. He wobbled for a moment, catching onto the cell wall to steady himself. 

The door to the cell swung open and two Klit’ni guards walked into the camera’s line of sight, pushing another prisoner ahead of them.

“Shiro,” Keith whispered.

“I don’t think his negotiations worked,” Pidge said, maybe just an observation, maybe some kind of attempt at lightening the mood. Keith didn’t answer her.

Shiro looked terrible. His metal arm hung limp at his side, and more of his face was red with blood than not. One of the guards shoved him forward and he fell. Keith’s breath caught in his throat, just for a moment, as Shiro hit the ground and went still. Then he was one his feet again, whirling and going straight at the guards.

Before he could get anywhere close to them, however, one of the guards pressed something in his hand, and Shiro stumbled again, dropping to his knees. 

A sharp intake of breath from Pidge. “What did they do to him?”

“What did they do to who?”

Pidge and Keith whirled around, Keith nearly losing his balance as Pidge’s chair spun. Hunk stood behind them. Pidge tried to hide the screen behind her.

“It’s… It’s just…” Pidge stammered, already twisting back, trying to catch sight of the camera feed, obviously not wanting to miss whatever was going on. Keith felt the same way. 

“You might not want to watch this, Hunk,” Keith said.

Hunk looked serious. “It’s Lance and Shiro, isn’t it?”

A moment of hesitation, and then Keith nodded. Pidge backed away from the screen, and all three of them turned their attention to it.

In the moments they’d looked away, the guards had pinned Shiro to a wall directly below the camera. One of the guards held his arm still with one hand, the other hand pressed against his throat. The second guard snapped a chain around his metal arm. Lance stood frozen in place a few feet away.

Hunk looked pale. “Is this live?”

“Yeah,” Pidge answered quietly.

Shiro wasn’t going down without a fight. He kicked at the guard in front of him, managing to knock the Klit’ni off of its feet. He lunged forward, but then the second guard pressed the thing in his hand again. Shiro fell, curling around himself, held semi-upright by his Galra prosthetic. 

“What was that?” Hunk asked. 

Keith’s palms stung. He glanced down, realized his hands had been curling tighter and tighter into fists as he watched. He opened them and saw a series of crescent-shaped marks in his skin, a few starting to turn red. He was confused at actually seeing his palms, and then realized he’d taken his gloves off earlier and never remembered to put them back on. Maybe the lack of sleep was getting to him after all.

“Keith, what—are you okay?”

Keith looked up at Hunk. Pidge was looking at him too now, both looking concerned. He shook his head, then realized that wasn’t the right answer and stopped.

“No—I’m fine, it’s fine.” He rubbed his hands together, trying to ignore—and hide—the smears of blood. “Just realized I forgot my gloves.”

Hunk still looked worried. “You’re bleeding, Keith.”

“I’m not—” He shoved his hands down at his sides, closed into loose fists. “I’m fine. Really.”

He felt dizzy all of a sudden. The subtle noises of the room—Pidge and Hunk’s breathing, a quiet beeping from the screen, the tap of the keyboard—became a roar in his ears. Hunk kept looking at him with that concerned expression, and then Keith couldn’t take it anymore.

“I’m going to get Coran,” he said, latching onto the first good excuse he could think of. “He’ll… He’ll want to see this.”

Keith ran from the room.

He didn’t know where Coran was, but as he turned a corner, he bumped right into him. Coran held up his hands to steady Keith.

“Whoa there, number four. What’s the rush?”

“Pidge found cameras,” he said, his words coming out in one short burst. “Shiro and Lance are in a cell. Shiro’s hurt, and Lance is too, and—”

Coran’s brow furrowed in a mixture of confusion and concern. “Show me.”

“They’re in the control room.” He led Coran back the way he’d come. “I mean, Pidge and Hunk are. Not—” He didn’t finish. 

“Are you hurt?” Coran took Keith’s hand in his, uncurling his fingers. “What happened?”

Keith winced. There was more blood than he’d thought. “I’m fine. It was an accident.” He pulled his hands away from Coran, who just frowned. “I’ll take care of it. Just go to the control room, okay?”

Coran looked at him for another long moment, then nodded hesitantly. “All right. If you need help, come ask.”

“Right.” Keith turned away, then headed to his room.

When he got to the bathroom, he turned on the water in the sink, letting it run over his hands and turn the blood pink. The tiny cuts stung.

He cleaned the blood off of his fingers and the sides of his hands, then looked through the cabinet under the sink for a first aid kit. He thought he’d seen one there before, and was rewarded with a small white tin. He couldn’t find any space band-aids, but there was a long roll of white, gauzy bandage. He’d have to make do. 

He put his gloves on over the bandages. It was tight and uncomfortable, making the cuts sting more, so he took them back off. He slid down against the closed bathroom door, sitting on the floor and staring at his hands.

A little part of him didn’t mind that he’d hurt himself. It had just been an accident, after all. Just an accident this time. In some twisted way, he was okay with the cuts, because Shiro was hurt so much worse. It didn’t make sense, he knew that. But in his tired, confused, angry mind, it helped.

A knock on the door startled him. Hunk’s voice came through. “You okay in there?”

“Yeah.” Keith’s voice was quiet, so he said it again, a little stronger. “Yeah, I’m fine. Hang on.” He stood up and opened the door. 

“Kind of was hoping you’d fallen asleep. You and Pidge both need some rest.” Hunk’s gaze darted to his bandaged hands, then back to his face. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine.” Keith gripped his gloves in one hand. “What about Shiro and Lance?”

Hunk shrugged one shoulder. “They’re alone now. Lance is taking care of Shiro.”

Keith sighed. “I wish we could talk to them.”

“You and me both,” Hunk said. “Do you want to go back to the control room? Or did you actually want to take a nap?”

“Can’t sleep,” Keith said shortly. 

“You haven’t even tried—”

“I won’t be able to,” Keith snapped. “And I don’t want to. We need to get Shiro and Lance out of there. I’m not resting until they’re safe.”

“You’re not going to be much help if you’re so sleep deprived you can’t stand,” Hunk pointed out, but Keith ignored him and started to head down the hallway.

Hunk caught up to him. “Really, Keith. You look awful, man. Just rest for a couple of minutes. I’ll wake you up the second we have something for you to do. Promise.”

“Pidge should rest first,” Keith said.

Hunk sighed. “You could both rest at the same time. That’s an option.”

Keith just shook his head. 

When they stepped back into the control room, Pidge was absent-mindedly spinning on her chair. The feed of Shiro and Lance was still up, showing Lance sitting on the cell floor by Shiro, wiping blood off of his face. A few other things were pulled up, and Pidge occasionally stopped spinning to tap a few keys. 

“Hi,” she said as Keith approached. She pointed at one of the other camera feeds, showing a group of Klit’ni sitting around a table and eating. “Watch this.”

Keith watched as she typed something into the keypad for several seconds, then hit the final key with a dramatic flourish. As soon as she did, a red light started flashing in the camera feed. Every single Klit’ni slumped their shoulders, dropped their food, and slowly got to their feet.

“Pidge keeps setting off alarms,” Coran explained.

“I figured if I can’t get past them, might as well set some random ones off, right?” Pidge spun her chair. “Right now, they think somebody just triggered alarms on the opposite side of the base. Well, they probably don’t actually think that. This is the third time I’ve sent this particular group of soldiers off somewhere. But they have to investigate every time anyway.”

“And that helps us how?” Keith asked. It was certainly annoying for the Klit’ni, and in better circumstances, he might have even found it funny. 

“I was thinking that if I keep setting off alarms, eventually they’ll stop investigating some of them. They’ll get too tired, or too slow, and—”

“And we’ll have an opportunity to break in,” Hunk said. “Pidge, you’re a genius.”

“I know.” Pidge grinned, spun her chair once more, then watched as another group of Klit’ni filed into a previously-empty camera feed. “Where should I send this group?”

Hunk was about to suggest something, when a sudden movement in Shiro and Lance’s cell caught Keith’s attention.

“Whatever you’re going to do, do it quickly,” Keith said, pointing as a pair of Klit’ni guards entered the cell. “They’re back.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Sorry for the "late" update. My health took a nosedive this week, so most of my energy went into work so, y'know, I can have an income, which meant I was usually too exhausted for writing by the end of the day. But! I managed to scrape this chapter together despite my sick and frazzled state of mind. Maybe we can blame the overall sense of confusion on Shiro's concussion?
> 
> I'll check for typos tomorrow morning. I'm too tired to catch everything now, and too impatient to wait to post it.

Shiro came back to his senses slowly, one at a time. First his hearing, picking up distant sounds and voices. Then feeling, hard, cold floor under him and a heavy ache through his entire body. He blinked, eyelids heavy, and his vision was blurry. Klit’ni feet moved in front of him, around the communications room. They’d moved him while he was out.

He catalogued his injuries. Besides the overall pain from the shock bracelet, his ribs ached and his head pounded. Worst of all was his wrist, and when the feeling came back completely, he gritted his teeth. He looked down at it. Red, burned, and twisted in a way that was not right. Shiro attempted to move it, then let out a quiet hiss of pain. Definitely broken.

The memory of Vaktla catching his fist filled his mind, the cracking sound that had come from his wrist and filled his ears. His stomach turned and he had to remind himself to breathe.

Footsteps scuffled in front of him. He slowly, painfully raised his gaze to the figure in front of him. Vaktla. 

“Welcome back, Champion. Tell me.” She bent down over him, close enough to his face to make out the scaly lines on her face, the glint in her grayish-green eyes. “Are you ready to listen now?”

If Shiro had had any more energy, he would have spat at her. Or maybe told her to go to hell. Or maybe both. Instead, he just closed his eyes and let his head go limp against the ground again.

A sharp, sudden impact to his cheek knocked his head to one side. His eyes flew open in surprise. Vaktla’s hand was still raised.

“You’ve rested enough, paladin. Eyes open now.” 

Shiro coughed, spat a mouthful of blood on the floor. Vaktla watched, her gaze never shifting.

“What do you want from me?” Shiro rasped, his voice dry and hoarse.

“The same as always,” she said casually, her tone purely conversational. “The black lion.”

“I already told you,” he hissed, glaring at her. “I can’t bring her here. And I wouldn’t even if I could.”

“You can, though.” A smug look crossed Vaktla’s face. “I have a plan. Your paladin friends have been trying to help you, and annoying as it may be, I believe their efforts will not be in vain. They’ve given us the perfect opportunity.”

Shiro just glared at her, trying not to wonder what she was talking about.

“The next time they attempt to hack into our weapons, I will allow them to go through. The entire base’s systems will seemingly shut down, and they will, of course, immediately attack. When the lions are close enough, you will take control of the black lion and bring it to me.”

“Never,” Shiro snarled.

“It is not a choice.” Vaktla’s smug smile disappeared, replaced by a cold, hard expression. “You will do as I say now, or I will shoot the blue paladin and then you will do as I say.”

A cold feeling ran through Shiro. He knew she would do it. “Leave him alone. He’s just a kid.”

“He is a paladin of Voltron,” Vaktla corrected. “Just as you are.”

Turmoil raged inside of Shiro. He couldn’t just let the black lion fall into the enemy’s hands. But he couldn’t let Lance die. He couldn’t be responsible for another innocent death, especially not someone he cared so much about. Someone he was responsible for.

Vaktla straightened up, gesturing to one of the Klit’ni guards standing nearby. “Make sure he stays where he is. I don’t have time to worry about keeping him down, and I need him awake for this.”

The guard nodded once, then moved over to Shiro. Shiro tried to curl away from him, but a warning buzz from the cuff on his wrist kept him still. The alien guard pulled Shiro to his feet. The room spun, his vision blurring out for a moment as his head pounded. The only thing that kept him standing was the pressure of the guard’s hands on his shoulders. The guard twisted his arm behind his back, and Shiro let out a gasp at the unexpected pain lacing through his wrist. Something clicked around the cuff, and then around the one on his metal arm. 

Satisfied that Shiro’s arms were fastened securely behind his back, the guard kicked him back to the ground. He knelt on the floor, curling forward slightly and struggling to catch his breath. He had to… had to keep it together. A steady, throbbing pain ran through his broken wrist. The weight of his useless right arm pulled at the cuff, twisting his wrist, and he couldn’t move either arm to alleviate the pressure.

He blinked the last few spots out of his vision and looked up. Vaktla stood over the controls of a huge screen, dozens of camera angles pulled up on it. As Shiro watched, an alarm went off in the bottom corner. Vaktla didn’t seem concerned, or even surprised. She tapped a few buttons, shutting it off, and then watched the screen intently again. A minute later, a different alarm started flashing in the upper right of the screen. Once again, Vaktla turned it off calmly and went back to watching. It was as if she was waiting for the alarms.

She noticed Shiro watching her. “One of your friends has gotten into our systems. Alarms have been going off for nearly an hour now, in a new location every time. We investigated the first few, but I have stopped sending men to look now. They are trying to wear us down. It will not work.”

That would be Pidge, Shiro figured. He wasn’t sure if there was actually a plan behind the random alarms, or if Pidge had just gotten bored. Whatever the case, it didn’t seem to bother Vaktla too much.

“I am continuing to monitor each location, however,” Vaktla went on. “I am also watching the sky, to make sure they are not planning a surprise attack.” She tapped the screen, on a camera feed showing the outside of the base. “They are trying to wear down our defenses until they can get past them and into our weapons systems.”

Another alarm blared from the screen. Vaktla took a moment to shut it off, then continued speaking. “Right now, they are only setting off small, internal alarms. They will soon move onto the weapons systems again. And this time, we will be waiting. This plan of theirs can be used to our advantage. I have disabled some of the firewalls around the weapons system, so when they attempt to restart it, it will go through this time. They will attack immediately after. And that is when you will take control of the black lion.”

Shiro’s face was already tight and drawn with pain, but he managed to glare a little darker at her. There were holes in her plan. If the weapons were down, then the lions would be able to take them out right away. After that, it shouldn’t be too hard to take out the base itself. With any luck, Vaktla’s plan would completely backfire and Shiro and Lance would be out of here in a matter of hours.

“Of course, the weapons will not really be offline,” Vaktla said casually, as if she was reading his mind. “They will just appear to be nonfunctional.”

Shiro hated his luck.

 

****

 

Lance’s eyes wouldn’t open. He struggled to breathe, panic tightening his chest and throat. A deep sort of pain ached through his whole body, and a sharp, throbbing pain stabbed his shoulder over and over. He was totally paralyzed. Tears stung his eyelids. His heart pounded, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe, he felt hot and dizzy and the world was spinning around him even with his eyes shut—

The panic subsided into a distant grey confusion after a few minutes. His breath was still shallow and rough, scratching his throat and wheezing in his chest. He couldn’t get his eyes open, but he could figure out where he was easily enough. Sand and cold cement pressed under his cheek and shoulder. His shoulder continued to spasm. He took in short, wet gasps of air, tears squeezing out of his eyes and tracing their way down his face.

It hurt. Everything hurt and he was alone. He wanted to hear something other than his own pathetic whimpers or the scream of pain inside his head, wanted Shiro to tell him it was okay even if it wasn’t—

_Shiro._

The mental image of Shiro motionless on the floor, Vaktla standing over him with her staff, filled Lance’s mind. He forced his eyes open now, his eyelashes sticking together until he reached up with his good hand and scrubbed at his eyes, coming away gritty with sand, tears, and dried blood. He felt gross and sweaty and he wanted a shower.

Man, his thoughts were whiny. But Lance thought maybe he’d earned it. He had torture under his belt, after all. He’d been through a lot as paladin of Voltron, but this was new.

Lance curled around his arm. He was alone in the cell. 

He let himself rest for a few minutes, at least until his breathing had evened out and the pain in his shoulder diminished enough that he felt safe to move. Then, he held his arm against his chest and sat up slowly. 

His sling still hung around his neck, and with a bit of careful maneuvering, he managed to get his arm back into it. By the end of it, he was out of breath again. While he rested, he caught sight of something across the cell, by the door: another cup. He crawled over to it, his heart leaping up to his throat. 

It felt ridiculous, to get this excited over water. But Lance didn’t have a lot else to be excited for. At the moment, actually, he didn’t have _anything else_ to be excited for. So he took the small blessing while he had it.

He drank probably more of the water than he should have. It was cold and his throat was dry, and when the cup was nearly half-empty, he stopped reluctantly. He had to leave at least half for Shiro. He wanted to get a little bit on the stinging, angry red burns on his wrist, but he couldn’t figure out how with only one functional hand. He decided he’d just wait for Shiro.

He put the cup in a safe corner of the cell. This one was not getting accidentally knocked over. Lance still mourned those few precious sips of water that had been spilled into the sand. 

Lance settled with his back against a wall, waiting by the door. They’d have to bring Shiro back soon. They had to. Shiro… Shiro was okay. Shiro was _okay._ He was going to come back, and they’d figure something out. Lance could think now, could come up with a plan…

His head pounded. He tipped it back against the wall, closing his eyes and waiting for Shiro.

 

****

 

Shiro found himself drifting more times than he would’ve liked. He shook his head, trying to clear the fog inside of it. He was starting to feel sick, but he couldn’t figure out whether it was from the constant pain in his wrist or if he’d hit his head hard enough to get a concussion. He definitely had a headache, at any rate.

The guards had stopped hovering over Shiro and moved a short distance away, apparently convinced that he was in no position to move. Shiro was more than willing to go with that observation. There was nowhere he could really go, anyway, and attacking Vaktla would just get him hurt worse. So he stayed where he was, shoulders slumped and wrist aching.

He wondered if Lance was okay. He’d looked pretty rough, barely conscious and face covered in blood, but Shiro was fuzzy on the exact moment he’d last seen him. Most of his memories from before he passed out were a blur. He thought he remembered Vaktla ordering someone to take him back to the cell. He hoped he’d be able to take care of himself…

Shiro’s eyes slid shut. He caught himself, jerked his head up again. Vaktla still stood by the console, filled with incredible patience as she disabled alarm after alarm. Shiro watched the lights go on and off. A quiet ringing filled his ears, though it took him a moment to realize that it wasn’t from an alarm. He winced, turning his head to try to get rid of the noise.

A warning beep came from Vaktla’s screen. “They are focusing on the weapons systems again. Kyadhk, bring the blue paladin here.”

One of the Klit’ni guards bowed and hurried from the room. Vaktla continued to tap at the control panel, then looked up at Shiro. “It will take a few minutes to get through the firewalls. I have not disabled all of them, or they would become suspicious. Once it is done, however, it will be your turn to act.”

Shiro’s mind felt heavy, clumsy. He tried to clear it, tried to come up with a response. Nothing came.

“You will do exactly as I say,” Vaktla said, her voice cold and sharp. “The moment you do otherwise, I will shoot the blue paladin without hesitation. And then I will shoot you. Understood?”

Shiro stared at the floor. There had to be something… 

Something pressed against his chin and his head went up. Vaktla was there, her claw-like fingernails digging into his skin. 

“Am I understood?” She repeated herself slowly, hissing each word.

Shiro nodded once.

Vaktla stepped back, brushing her fingers against the side of her tunic. “Good. Do not forget.”

How could he forget? Shiro closed his eyes, trying to dull the ache behind them. He had to do something… He couldn’t just let this happen—

A deafeningly loud siren sounded. Shiro’s eyes flew open. A red light pulsed throughout the room and the siren continued to scream. Shiro winced, squeezed his eyes shut again. This was not helping the headache at all.

“Another false alarm,” Vaktla said, and then with a note of dry humor in her voice, added “Apparently there’s an intruder in the control room.”

The red light continued to flash, pressing against Shiro’s eyes even with them closed. He didn’t know if it was taking longer for her to shut the alarm down than usual, or if he was just too sensitive to it. Then Vaktla made a noise of frustration, and at the same time, something clicked.

The light went back and forth between short and long pulses. As soon as he noticed, he automatically translated it into Morse code. _Dot, dash, dot; dash, dot, dot, dot…_ R, B, B… No, wait it was a looping pattern. The same three letters flashed over and over: BRB.

Shiro almost laughed out loud at the sheer ridiculousness of communicating through a flashing alarm light, using both Morse code and text slang. Ridiculous or otherwise, however, Pidge had a plan. Somehow she knew exactly where Shiro was—the alarm was only going off in here—and she was about to do something.

Vaktla shut off the alarm, then glanced at the door. “Where is Kyadhk? They are almost past the firewalls…”

Without warning, the entire room was plunged into complete darkness.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was not expecting to need a trigger warning for this chapter, but it went other places than I expected. Be warned of on-screen character deaths and some pretty graphic violence throughout pretty much the whole chapter.
> 
> This is a little later than I intended to update, but a lot of stuff happened over the weekend and into the beginning of the week (a lot of really good things). Including the results of the short story contest I entered awhile back--I was a finalist! The top six stories (including mine) were posted on the website, so I will link to that in the author notes at the end of the chapter for anyone who is wanting to read it.

The cell door swung open, startling Lance’s eyes open. A Klit’ni guard stood in the doorway. One of the first things Lance noticed was a new controller device in his hand. Apparently they had spares.

“On your feet,” the guard said. He seemed familiar—Lance was pretty sure this particular alien had been around him before. “Vaktla wants you.”

Lance figured it was no use fighting back. He wasn’t keen on getting shocked again, and besides, maybe if he cooperated, he’d get to see Shiro. So he struggled to get to his feet, wavering unsteadily for a moment before catching his balance completely.

In the next moment, he wondered if he’d been dizzier than he thought. Everything suddenly went black. Background noises that he hadn’t even been aware of—distant mechanical hums, low thrums and soft clicks—cut out altogether, leaving a thick, heavy silence.

But Lance could still feel the sand under his feet and the stone wall under his hand. And in the brief second of darkness, he felt the pressure around his wrist give way.

He twisted his hand and caught the cuff, pulling it just a little to snap it off of his wrist the whole way. He didn’t know how it had come off, not yet, but he didn’t care. When the lights came back on with a hissing click, Lance was ready.

The guard looked confused, and he turned towards Lance as soon as he could see again. Lance tackled him before he was halfway across the cell. The guard’s hand flew up, slamming down on the button. Lance felt the warning hum in the cuff, and shoved it in the alien’s face. The Klit’ni let out a strangled cry, low and clicking in the back of his throat. His back arched, claws scrabbling against the floor, trying to make it stop, but unable to release the button.

Lance scrambled backwards. His chest heaved, suddenly feeling shaky and sick. He reminded himself that the guard had pressed the button. If Lance hadn’t thrown the cuff, he would have been the one getting this pain. The Klit’ni had done this. They deserved…

The guard went limp. The controller finally released from his claws and rolled across the floor. A thin trail of orange-ish blood dripped from the alien’s mouth. Dull grey-green eyes rolled upwards, blank and unmoving. 

Lance took a shuddering breath. He picked up the controller with shaking hands, then took the cuff as well. Unclasped, it was simply a long, thin strip of metal, smooth on one end and ridged black on the inside. 

The Klit’ni was not breathing.

Lance turned away from the sight of it. He didn’t have time to feel anything. Right now, he had to find Shiro. He had to get them out of here.

Armed only with an electric cuff, he ran through the door.

As Lance ran, he tried to remember the way to the room he’d last seen Shiro in. He’d been only semi-conscious both times he’d made the trip, so he really had no idea which way to go. He left the cell block, then stopped at the first intersection of hallways.

He peeked out into the next hallway, found it empty, and went left. He thought he remembered going this way, maybe. 

As he walked, he noticed a few odd things. The first was that he still hadn’t run into any other Klit’ni. He would have thought they’d be patrolling all over the place. But there wasn’t a single sign of life anywhere.

The second thing he noticed took a little longer to sink in. It happened about halfway down a third or fourth hallway. A muffled boom from outside, and Lance froze. He realized that he’d been hearing the sound of explosions and distant gunfire for awhile, but for some reason, it hadn’t fully sunk in. 

A surge of hope filled him. If the Klit’ni were fighting someone, there was only one _someone_ it could be. Lance threw caution to the wind and sprinted down the hallway. He had to find Shiro. The others were here, they were getting _out,_ Lance’s breath came quick at the idea—

The door to the communications room was open. Lance slowed for just a moment, just to take in the room in one quick glance.

There was Shiro. He knelt on the floor, head bowed so his white tips—now streaked with dark red—obscured most of his face. 

“Shiro!” Lance ran towards him. His head jerked up at the sound of Lance’s voice, and his eyes widened. A strip of fabric was knotted around his mouth and his arms were pulled back, tied behind him. Shiro shook his head at Lance. A collection of bruises that had not been there before now adorned his face.

Lance slowed. A nervous feeling gripped his stomach. “Shiro, what—”

There was a hiss and a click behind him. Lance whirled around, fingers tightening around the metal controller in his hands. 

“Hello, paladin,” Vaktla clicked, twirling her staff in a manner that seemed almost lazy. The door was shut behind her, and now she casually blocked the only exit.

“Stay back.” Lance widened his stance, placing himself firmly between Vaktla and Shiro. He heard a rustle of movement behind him and hoped Shiro would have enough sense to stay out of his way. 

Vaktla laughed, taking a slow, fluid step towards Lance. “Very intimidating. I am sure, at some point, that you might have been a formidable enemy to some. But as I told you before, you are too small to be a warrior. Too small to—”

Lance didn’t let her finish. He ran forward. She swung her staff, and Lance ducked under it. It hissed over his head, missing him by a fraction of an inch. Lance slid, ending up near Vaktla’s feet. Before he lost the opportunity, he slapped the cuff around her leg, letting it click into place before scrambling backwards and slamming down on the controller.

Vaktla screamed through gritted teeth, more of a loud hiss than anything. She fell, knuckles tight around her staff. Lance released the button and she was on her feet the instant he did, so he pressed it again. 

“Just stay down,” Lance told her, watching her choke in sharp gasps of breath that reminded him painfully of Shiro. 

She let out an animal scream of frustration, then swung her staff. Lance stared at her; he was still holding down the button, still sending electricity through the ridged cuff, and he knew _exactly_ what that felt like, and yet she was still moving. 

It caught him off guard, and so when Vaktla’s staff slammed against his legs, he didn’t have time to react. 

The controller flew from his hand, bouncing across the floor and landing closer to Shiro than to Lance. Lance hit the ground, his feet swept out from under him. Vaktla was up in a flash, standing over him with her staff raised. Lance struggled to catch his breath, stop the stabbing pain in his shoulder, but he didn’t get the chance before her staff hit him again. 

A sharp cry tore out of his throat, and it hurt. It hurt to scream, it hurt in his chest where a sharp fire of pain had lit up when Vaktla hit him, it hurt his dry throat, his aching shoulder and pounding head.

“Now, Champion,” Vaktla was saying, any trace of civility utterly gone from her voice. “The black lion, or the boy dies.”

Shiro’s eyes were wide, wild with pain, fear. He shifted position, looking as if he was going to actually try to get up to defend Lance. Vaktla’s staff went up over Lance’s head, and Shiro made a muffled, cut off sound of alarm to stop her. Then, he squeezed his eyes shut.

“No.” Lance coughed, rattling his chest and sending sharp pains shooting throughout his entire body. Shiro’s eyes opened again, and this time the look he gave Lance was a deep, tired sadness. “Shiro…”

They just had to wait until the rest of the team got in here. They were just outside. It was only a matter of time before they came in to rescue them—

There was a clicking sound above Lance. He looked up, and realized that somehow, Vaktla had gotten a gun. Maybe she’d always had it, since Lance walked in. Maybe this was her plan all along. She leveled the weapon at Lance’s face, then looked over at Shiro again. “Now.”

Lance didn’t have that matter of time to wait. He stared up at Vaktla, looked her right in the eye, and tried to pretend he wasn’t scared. Tried to pretend that he would take death when it came, because he would. He didn’t want to, but he would. Because Lance’s life wasn’t worth the safety of the universe.

“Three,” Vaktla hissed, her finger resting on the trigger. “Two.”

Lance heard the muffled sounds of Shiro’s protests. He saw the narrowed slits of Vaktla’s eyes. He felt his own breath catch in his throat, felt his mind run to a stop. His emotions stayed, an unintelligible, suffocating mass blocking his breathing and his thoughts—

“One,” Vaktla said, and her grip on the gun tightened.

In the next second, a lot of things happened.

An explosion sounded in Lance’s ears, and at first he thought it was Vaktla’s gun. But then the ground under him rumbled. Lance rolled with it, literally. He twisted to the side, rolling onto his bad shoulder and gritting his teeth to keep from screaming. Vaktla’s shot went off over him. It hit the ground near his head, shattering pieces of the stone floor and driving splinters of it into his face. Around him, the room continued to shake, stone cracking and pieces of sand and tiny debris raining down around him. It settled down, silent for the briefest fraction of a second.

Vaktla screamed. He thought it was from frustration at first, until he’d gotten himself into a sitting position and looked over. She was on her knees again, howling as blood dripped from her nose, mouth, and tiny ears, low on the sides of her head. She clutched at her ankle, as if she was trying to get the cuff off. The screams broke for a moment as she gasped in a desperate breath of air, then returned louder than before. Orange-ish liquid streamed from her chin, splattering the ground around her. Lance’s stomach turned and he looked away, looked at Shiro—

Shiro was still on his knees, still tied up, but he’d moved. He was closer to Lance, and Lance knew that in his hand, he was somehow holding the controller. His face was etched with pain, lined with the sheer torture of pressing the button, but his eyes were cold and unfeeling as he watched Vaktla writhe in pain.

Lance had the presence of mind to snatch up Vaktla’s gun, which had fallen to the ground near him. He wrapped his hand around it, pointed at her just in case, but it turned out that he didn’t need it.

Vaktla went silent. Her eyes were wide, wild, and her mouth was open in a silent scream. Her chest convulsed, shoulders jerking, and then she choked on her own blood, and her eyes rolled back.

Lance, despite himself, squeezed his eyes shut as she fell backwards. He heard a metallic clunk and opened his eyes to see the controller drop from Shiro’s hands. Shiro’s eyes were glazed over, looking at Lance but his gaze too far away to actually see him. He swayed slightly, and Lance scrambled to his feet, pain lighting up in his chest, his shoulder, his arm. He bit down on the inside of his lip, trapping back any cries of pain as he dropped the gun and caught Shiro before he could fall.

“Hey,” Lance managed to gasp out, holding Shiro upright. “Come on. Stay with me, Shiro.”

Shiro’s eyelids fluttered, but his eyes remained unfocused. Lance let his head slip forward to rest on his uninjured shoulder, freeing his hand so he could work off the gag tied around his mouth.

“Talk to me,” Lance said, tossing the scrap of cloth on the ground. “Shiro. Can you hear me?”

“Nnh,” Shiro groaned into his shoulder. “Yeah.”

“Okay.” Lance swallowed hard at the sight of Shiro’s wrist, twisted and angry red, cuffed to his non-functional Galra arm. “We’re going to get out of here. The rest of the team is outside. We just have to get out there, and we’re going to be okay.” His voice shook, but he tried to sound confident. More confident than he felt, because honestly, he thought his emotions were shutting down in general at this point. He wasn’t feeling much of anything, which was probably a good thing.

“Do you think you can sit up by yourself?” Lance asked, and in response, Shiro started to sit up. He wavered, squinting in Lance’s direction.

“Can’t really see much,” Shiro mumbled, his words slurring together. A knot of worry twisted Lance’s stomach. 

“It’s okay, I’m still right here. I’m going to try to get your hands free, okay?”

“Mm,” Shiro answered.

Lance moved behind Shiro, inspecting the cuffs on his wrists and trying not to gag at the sight of the burned, blistered and peeling skin around the shock bracelet. He managed to figure out the locking mechanism on the handcuffs, struggling with them for a moment before they clicked open. Shiro let out a hiss of pain, pulling his injured wrist to his side.

“You okay?” Lance asked, and Shiro just nodded. “I’m gonna try to get you to your feet. Okay? Do you think you can stand?”

“I’m fine,” Shiro insisted breathlessly. Lance got to his feet, reaching down to pull Shiro’s metal arm over his shoulders.

Something rustled behind him.

Lance’s stomach dropped. He’d forgotten—he’d been paying too much attention to Shiro, and Vaktla was still behind him…

Shiro was back on the ground in an instant and Lance had Vaktla’s gun in his hand, spinning on his heel.

Vaktla made no move to attack. She stood behind the main computer console, her hands tapping over the keyboard. She didn’t look up, didn’t pause, just continued with what she was doing as blood stained her face.

“Stop,” Lance barked, raising the gun, awkwardly wrapping his hand around it. It was just a little too big to maneuver with one hand, but he knew he could still shoot straight if he wanted. “Step away from the computer.”

Vaktla didn’t. She was shaking from blood loss, likely only semi-conscious, and yet she remained standing, calmly placing her hand on the console. “You will not leave this planet alive,” she rasped, her voice so low and quiet Lance almost missed it.

“Stop, _now,”_ Lance shouted, taking a step forward, but Vaktla did not intend to move. She didn’t seem to care.

“I have upheld my end of the bargain,” she hissed, slowly raising her head. Alarms started blaring around them, huge red symbols appearing on all of the screens in the room. Lance had no idea what they meant, but he knew it wasn’t good. “No black lion. Death to the—”

Lance fired. A spray of Klit’ni blood, and Vaktla hit the ground without another word. Lance gagged, but he forced himself to remain calm. He couldn’t think about this now. He had to get Shiro out of here—

Shiro was trying to get to his feet, and god was it painful to watch. He swayed, put his hand out to steady himself, hissed between gritted teeth and snatched it back to his side.

Lance bent down, putting Shiro’s arm over his shoulders again, gritting his teeth against the strain in his dislocated shoulder, and pulled him to his feet. “Come on, we gotta get out of here now.”

“Not time,” Shiro gasped. A bead of sweat rolled down the side of his face, and now Lance could feel Shiro shaking. “She trained the weapons… aimed them here, just in case something—”

“It’s going to be fine,” Lance said, stronger than he felt. “We’ve just got to make it outside—n”

The first shot hit the base. The ground shook, more violently than it had before and Lance lost his footing. They fell, a burst of pain stabbing in Lance’s shoulder. He rolled, still feeling the tremors in the floor under him, struggling to get back to his feet.

Shiro was on his side a few feet away, curled around himself and eyes squeezed shut. Lance staggered towards him, before Shiro’s eyes snapped open again.

“Go,” Shiro coughed. “Go, get out, Lance—”

“No, no I’m not leaving you.” He bent down, trying to help Shiro up once again, but Shiro pulled away. “Shiro, knock it off, you’re coming—”

“There’s not time!” Shiro’s voice snapped, rough and broken. “Lance, you need to leave.”

“No,” Lance shot back, dragging Shiro to his feet. “We’re both getting out of this one.”

This time, Shiro was coughing too hard to argue. Lance practically dragged him across the room, Shiro stumbling along. Debris rained down around them as a second explosion went off, closer to the base this time. Lance kept his balance this time, letting Shiro lean slightly against a wall to keep them upright for the worst of it.

They’d almost made it into the hallway before the third shot from the Klit’ni weapon, turned against their own base, punched through the ceiling.

Something hit Lance’s shoulder, and all he could feel was fire, tearing through his shoulder, arm, neck, chest. He heard his own strangled cry of pain. The world collapsed around him. He was left oblivious to everything but a high-pitched ringing in his ears, and even that eventually faded too.

 

*****

   
_“The weapons are back online, guys. Be careful.”_

_“Yeah, we got it—hang on, what are they doing?”_

_“Did they just fire on themselves?”_

_“What the quiznak? That doesn’t—oh god, oh god—”_

_“Shiro and Lance are in there!”_

_“Dammit, dammit, dammit!”_

_“I’m with Keith on that one. Hunk, get them out of there.”_

_“I’m trying! You have to take out the weapons, Keith—”_

_“Dammit, I’m trying!”_

_“Hurry, hurry…”_

_“Please let them be okay…”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is the link to the original short story I wrote and entered in that contest. My story is the fourth in the collection, starting on page 35 and titled "There Is No Fountain In Fountain, Pennsylvania." http://oneyearnovel.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/OYANContestWinners-2017.pdf  
> Of course, none of you are obligated to read it! I just knew a couple of you had asked about it back when I entered and expressed interest in reading the story if it was posted. So if you want to, there you go! If you do read it, let me know what you think? <3
> 
> THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH. I can't believe there's only three more chapters of this left to write. I'm so blown away by the amount of positive feedback I've gotten on this (you've all gotten to my head and now I'm plotting at least three other fics to write once Shifting Sands is done...


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -shows up a day late with Starbucks and the longest chapter yet-
> 
> Warning for description of injuries and one or two very small flashbacks of Lance's.

The inside of Lance’s head felt fuzzy. A high-pitched ringing hummed over the rest of the sounds he could make out, the muffled explosions, creaking metal, Shiro’s frantic shouts…

Shiro.

Lance snapped his eyes open. Nothing changed—it was completely dark whether his eyes were opened or shut. He calmed a wave of panic, forcing himself to ignore the throbbing pain in his shoulder and focus on the more pressing matter.

“Lance? Lance, please, please, Lance, be okay, please…” Shiro’s voice bordered on hysterical, and now Lance wondered how long he’d been calling for him.

“I’m okay,” Lance said. His voice was rough and as soon as he spoke, his throat tightened and he coughed, feeling his mouth fill with dust and sand. “You okay? Where are you?”

“Lance.” Shiro heaved a sigh of relief, his voice shaking. “You’re okay? You’re not hurt?”

“I’m okay,” Lance repeated. He felt awful, honestly, between his shoulder, his headache, and a dozen aches and bruises, but nothing seemed too badly hurt. He felt around, trying to figure out what the area around them was like. The ceiling had collapsed, but somehow they weren’t completely crushed. Lance had no idea how, but he wasn’t going to spend too much time worrying about it now. He needed to get them out. 

Which meant finding Shiro, who had fallen silent. “Shiro? I can’t see you, I need you to talk to me. Where are you? Are you hurt?”

Lance heard a quiet, confused grumble from Shiro. “I can’t… I can’t feel my arm.”

Okay. Okay, that wasn’t good. “Which arm, Shiro?”

A short pause, and then, “Either?” Shiro made it sound like a question. A panicked edge entered his voice. “Lance, I can’t move. At all.”

That could mean a dozen things. Maybe he was stuck, something had fallen and trapped him under it, or maybe he was hurt… Whatever it was, Lance needed to find him. He’d sat up and felt all around him, finding piles of debris and a low ceiling of rock above him. The fact that there was no light was worrying him as well. If no light was getting through, there was a good chance that air wasn’t circulating either. He had to stay calm, though. No use hyperventilating and using any more of the air than necessary.

“Just stay still and keep talking, Shiro. I’ll find you.” Lance couldn’t stand, but he felt his way along on his knees, crawling towards Shiro’s voice painfully slowly.

“There’s something on my legs,” Shiro said, his breath starting to pick up. “Lance, I-I can’t feel—”

Knots of worry tied up Lance’s stomach. Shiro sounded really, really rough. “It’s gonna be okay. Shiro, stay calm, okay? Keep breathing and talk slowly.”

“I—I can’t—”

“Count for me,” Lance told him. He was getting close, so now he was a little extra careful with where he put his hand, brushing gently over each obstacle in his way and making sure it wasn’t actually Shiro. “Okay? Just start with one and keep counting.”

Shiro took a shaky breath, then did as Lance told him. When he got to seventeen, Lance touched the slick fabric of his sleeve. Shiro, despite his earlier claims that he couldn’t feel his arm, immediately tensed under the touch.

“Okay,” Lance said, settling himself beside Shiro and breathing a little easier. “It’s okay. I’m here now. Can you tell me what you’re feeling?”

“Can’t feel my arm—” Shiro started to mumble.

“Tell me what you can feel,” Lance interrupted. “What can you feel?”

Shiro was quiet for a moment before answering. “Head hurts. And my legs.”

Lance’s hand found Shiro’s face and Shiro shrank back. “It’s okay,” Lance reassured, taking his hand away just in case. “It’s just me. Is that all right?”

“Nnh,” Shiro said. He sounded _awful,_ so Lance took it as a yes and felt his forehead, brushing sticky hair away. He was too warm, and Lance’s fingers came away damp with either sweat or blood, or both. Either way, Lance was worried.

“I’m going to see what’s on your legs,” Lance told Shiro, although maybe ‘see’ wasn’t the best word choice. Shiro didn’t answer. “Shiro? Can you still hear me?”

“Yeah,” Shiro rasped. “Sorry. I… Getting harder to…” He made a frustrated noise. “Can’t think right.”

“It’s okay,” Lance promised. “As long as you can still hear me, it’s okay. All right? Just… Try to stay awake.”

“Okay,” Shiro mumbled. 

Lance reached out, finding Shiro’s shoulder, figuring out the way he was angled, and then touched where his legs should be. His hand hit rock. He grimaced, feeling around the jagged edge of the chunk of ceiling. There was a small gap under it, where it should have been on the floor, and when Lance managed to fit his fingers through the gap, he felt something wet. 

Lance barely kept from gagging. His mind was already churning out images of what Shiro’s legs could look like. He forced them to a back corner, trying to block them out entirely.

“Lance?” Shiro’s voice shook.

“I’m here, sorry.” Lance crawled back to Shiro’s head. “You okay?”

“Don’t know.” Shiro coughed, letting out a high pitched whine. He was probably in far more pain than he was letting on. Lance wondered if he could feel whatever pain was happening in his legs. He hoped not. “Still can’t… can’t really move at all.”

“There’s something on your legs, so that’s why you can’t move them,” Lance told him. “And your right arm isn’t working, remember? And you shouldn’t be moving your left arm much with your wrist the way it is. So just stay still, okay?”

Shiro’s breathed, ragged and shallow. “R-right.”

Lance put out his hand again, smoothing Shiro’s bangs once more. It was a small, repetitive motion, but it helped remind Lance that Shiro was still there. And it seemed like Shiro’s breathing came a little easier too, so Lance kept it up.

There was a beat of silence, and then Shiro spoke again. “Sorry about… all this.”

“It’s not your fault, Shiro.” Lance’s hand was shaking. He wondered how long it had been doing that and tried to get it to stop. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

“Should’ve…” Shiro trailed off, his voice getting softer and softer. The edge of panic was slipping away. “Should’ve just left… without me.”

“Nope, that wasn’t going to happen.” Lance ran his fingers through Shiro’s hair. He wished he could hold his hand, just like he’d done during Shiro’s nightmare, just like Shiro had done for him when the pain in his shoulder had been so horrible. But with Shiro's wrist as injured as it was, Lance figured it was better to not touch it at all. “You came back for me. I’m not leaving you. You’re stuck with me now.”

Shiro shivered. Lance frowned. His forehead was still sweaty and hot, and the air around Lance was starting to warm from their body heat and breath. 

“Are you cold?” Lance asked, concerned.

“Mm,” Shiro grunted. His voice sounded distant. “Little bit.”

Not good. Not good, not good. “Just hang in there. They’ll find us soon. Listen, the fighting sounds like it’s stopping.”

The muffled sounds of distant explosions had all but stopped, leaving only the occasional crash. 

Shiro didn’t answer.

“Shiro? You still there?” Lance’s fingers stopped over Shiro’s forehead. “Hey, Shiro. Just say something, please.”

Nothing. Lance tapped his forehead gently, but Shiro didn’t respond.

Lance’s breath caught in his throat. No, no, no… “Shiro, you gotta stay awake, buddy. Come on, wake up…”

His fingers trembled. Shiro didn’t react to his touch or his words, and, panic choking him, Lance realized he couldn’t hear his breathing. He set his hand on Shiro’s chest, his throat too tight to breathe.

Shiro’s chest rose and fell under his hand. Lance bit back a sob of relief. He curled forward, pressing his hand against his face to stifle the tears. They leaked out between his fingers anyway. He rubbed at his eyes, sniffling and feeling a little pathetic but too worried to really care.

“Just keep breathing, Shiro,” Lance whispered, touching Shiro’s forehead again and wiping away the sweat that had already gathered to stick his hair to his skin once more. “Just keep breathing. That’s all you have to do.”

The air around Lance continued to grow warmer, and so did Shiro’s forehead. Shiro shivered occasionally, once shifting position restlessly before giving a muffled whimper and going still again. Lance kept stroking his hair and telling him it would be all right, begging him to keep breathing. It was all he could do.

Eventually, he stopped talking. The air was definitely getting warmer at an alarming rate. If Lance was right that no air was getting through, he wanted to make what they had last as long as possible. He tried to take slow breaths, holding it out as long as he could before exhaling slowly. 

Basically, he was just matching Shiro’s slow, painful breathing.

The darkness pressed around Lance. He tried to ignore it, but once he stopped talking, it became impossible to forget about. It was so thick, so heavy, and it weighed on him. His shoulder throbbed and his head ached, and once he started thinking about the darkness having weight, he couldn’t shake the idea, and it seemed to pull harder at the pain. His head pounded, the pain in his shoulder increased until it felt like a dull knife repeatedly stabbing into him. 

The darkness also made it easier for his thoughts to run away from him. He heard noises, kept looking over his shoulder as if he’d be able to see something. Kept imagining someone coming up behind him, kept imagining Vaktla on her feet with her staff in one hand, even though she was dead, he _knew_ she was dead—he’d shot her, he’d seen her fall missing half her face, she was _dead—_

Then he couldn’t shake the image of Vaktla falling, the spray of orange blood splattering everything. The image of the Klit’ni guard in the cell, blood leaking from his mouth, nose, ears, eyes, his sightless eyes staring at nothing, images Lance couldn’t stop seeing, things he hadn’t just imagined, things Lance _had done…_

And then he heard someone calling his name, the insistent voice slowly breaking into his thoughts. Lance stared into the darkness, trying to place the voice. It wasn’t Shiro. Shiro was still and quiet beside him. But he thought… He thought he recognized…

“—ance! Shiro! Lance, where are you…”

_Hunk._

“Hunk?” Lance’s voice came out strangled. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Hunk!”

The voice was far away, growing more distant each second. Lance shouted Hunk’s name over and over, screaming until his voice was hoarse, and then when he stopped, he couldn’t hear anything. Lance’s chest heaved as he dragged in air, hot and thick. Had he just imagined Hunk’s voice? 

Shiro hadn’t moved or reacted in any way to Lance’s shouting. Lance ran a hand over his own forehead, pushing back his hair and struggling to slow his breathing. His chest started to ache. He felt like he wasn’t getting enough air, no matter how full his lungs were. 

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Lance whispered, brushing his fingers through Shiro’s hair. His throat squeezed tight, and he choked out a sob. “I’m sorry, Shiro, god, this is my fault…”

Tears dripped off of Lance’s nose and chin. Shiro’s breathing was loud, wheezing and gasping as he struggled to get enough air. 

He heard his name again. Lance didn’t answer at first. He wasn’t going to waste more of their limited oxygen supply shouting to a hallucination. 

_“Lance! Shiro! Lance, come on… Lance!”_

But it kept going, louder and more insistent, and then it was close, maybe just on the other side of the pile of rubble keeping them trapped down here. 

“Hunk?” Lance called tentatively.

“Lance!” And it was Hunk, and he was _there,_ and his voice was muffled and Lance couldn’t see him, but he could hear him, and Lance couldn’t quite breathe but _Hunk was there._ “Lance, can you hear me?”

“Hunk,” Lance sobbed, trying to get to his feet, trying to get closer to where his voice was coming through the rocks. “I can hear you. I can hear you.”

“Thank god, Lance, we were so worried,” Hunk said, and his voice shook. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Is Shiro there?”

“I’m okay. I’m fine. And Shiro’s…” Lance swallowed. “Shiro’s here. He’s hurt really bad, Hunk. You have to hurry.”

“We’re gonna dig you guys out. Just sit tight, okay? It’s gonna take a little while, I don’t want to collapse anything further—”

“Hunk, there’s no air getting through,” Lance interrupted. “And Shiro’s been out of it for awhile. You have to hurry, please—”

“Okay,” Hunk said, his voice shaking and started to rise with worry. “I’ll go as fast as I can. Hang in there, Lance.”

And then he was gone. Lance shrank back against the wall of rubble, finding Shiro again. Almost immediately, the darkness felt suffocating again, and the lack of oxygen in the air just made it worse. He started to wonder if he’d completely imagined the conversation with Hunk—already it felt more like a distant memory than something that had really happened.

Then he felt vibrations through the debris, heard the clunk and crash of rocks being moved. Hunk was there. It was going to be okay. They’d get out of this.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Lance whispered, half to Shiro, half to himself. He curled around Shiro as best as he could, trying to shield him from the occasional clouds of dust and debris that rained down from above them.

He touched a hand to Shiro’s forehead and froze.

Shiro was no longer warm.

Lance’s breath got stuck in his throat. He couldn’t get anything past the knot there, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t think, everything was a blurred mess of panic, Shiro felt _cold…_

He hadn’t even noticed, he hadn’t even been able to tell when Shiro’s breathing had changed, when the loud wheezing had stopped, when was the last he’d heard it? He couldn’t remember, oh _god,_ Shiro—

A rain of tiny rocks, dust, and sand fell around Lance, but he barely acknowledged it until suddenly he was blinded by a brilliant light. He squeezed his eyes shut, crying out at the sudden light. A wave of cool air hit him and he gasped it in, breathing again and again and trying to force as much of it into his lungs as he could. Gritty sand and dust found their way into his mouth with the air, and he coughed.

Beside him, Shiro shifted slightly. Lance forced his eyes open, caught sight of Shiro, blood matted in his hair and dried on his face, eyes shut and mouth slightly open. 

And he was breathing. 

And that was all that mattered to Lance right then.

Hunk was there, reaching down to Lance, helping him to his feet. Lance babbled something about Shiro, about being cold and his breathing, and then Lance coughed again, and Hunk just looked more and more worried. 

“Coran’s getting the healing pods ready,” Hunk said, and he sounded distant, but he was right there. His voice started to fade, even though Lance knew he was still talking. “Keith, I could really use your help here…”

Lance needed to focus. They were so close to being safe, but he couldn’t relax yet, not until Shiro was safe. But now everything he’d been putting off crashed, all the pain, all the confusion, all the memories, they were all breaking through the wall he’d hidden them behind. It was getting harder and harder to think…

“—ance? Lance, you still with me?”

Lance blinked, once, twice. “Yeah. Yeah, sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Hunk promised. “I’m gonna get you out of here and up to Yellow, okay? Pidge’ll be here in a minute to bring you to the castle—”

“Shiro,” Lance said, shaking his head. “Gotta get him first.”

“Keith’s here,” Hunk said, and Lance noticed Keith scrambling down the pile of debris. He hadn’t seen the red lion land. He was still out of it, apparently, and he needed to shake this. He wasn’t going to be any help if he couldn’t focus—

“Lance, I just need you to breathe,” Hunk said, his voice watery and fading. “C’mon buddy… doing really good…”

The knot in his throat hadn’t gone away, his chest only getting tighter, and now his mouth felt completely dry. He couldn’t breathe around the feeling of sand _inside of him_ and he couldn’t cough it out—

A new feeling of something pressing around his head. A visor closed over his face, and then cool, clean, filtered air washed over his face, free of sand and dust. Lance struggled through one breath, coughed, breathed again. He was on his back, and saw Keith’s face above him, eyes dark and worried and the hot sandy wind tangling his hair. Keith’s mouth moved, but Lance couldn’t make out the words. He saw… he saw his name? There was a question, and Lance just stared.

He heard Hunk’s voice close to his ear. “Just breathe, Lance. Okay? Can you do that?”

“I—” Lance started, then coughed again. Suddenly, his head was filled with voices.

“Lance! Are—”

“You okay, Lance? We were so—”

“—t’s going on—”

Lance winced at the noise. Hunk’s voice cut through the rest of them as Keith disappeared from his line of sight and Hunk appeared in his place.

“Don’t overwhelm him, guys. He’s wearing Keith’s helmet. It seemed like the sand in the air was bothering him.”

“M fine,” Lance managed to say.

Pidge’s voice sounded in his ear. “Be there in thirty ticks. How’s Shiro?”

“He’s breathing,” Keith said, outside of Lance’s head. He was kneeling by Shiro now.

“He’s breathing,” Hunk repeated into his helmet. 

“He had a fever,” Lance mumbled. “And then it stopped and he felt cold.”

Keith frowned and touched Shiro’s forehead. “Lance is right. He’s really cold.”

“Probably going into shock,” Pidge said over the comms. Hunk repeated her words aloud to Keith. “We have to get him to the castle ASAP.”

“There’s a pretty big chunk of rock trapping him. Keith and I will have to work together to move it.”

Lance’s slowly clearing mind caught the implications in that. Hunk couldn’t help Keith if he was busy with Lance. 

“Touching down now,” Pidge said. Lance felt the vibrations as her lion landed, and then heard the skittering of pebbles as she half-slid down the edge of the rubble.

“Careful,” Hunk warned, getting to his feet. “Everything’s still really unstable.”

“I’m being careful,” Pidge snapped, then appeared beside Hunk. She knelt down beside Lance, who was just starting to feel like maybe he could sit up on his own. “Hey, Lance. We’re gonna get you out of here now, okay?”

Lance shakily pushed himself upright. Pidge reached out a hand to steady him.

“Maybe I should carry him out,” Hunk said.

Lance grimaced, shook his head. “Get Shiro. I can walk.”

Hunk didn’t look happy about it, but he didn’t argue. Especially not after Keith spoke up.

“Hey, Hunk? Can you hurry it up, please?” Despite the sarcasm, Keith’s voice held a strangled, worried tone.

Pidge helped Lance to his feet while Hunk moved to Shiro’s side. Lance looked worriedly at them, at Shiro’s twisted body half-hidden by Hunk and Keith. Pidge tried to distract him, but Lance was still wearing Keith’s helmet and heard everything Hunk said. 

“What are on his wrists?”

Pidge guided Lance up over a pile of rocks and sand and twisted metal. Lance lost his footing several times, nearly taking Pidge with him, but she always managed to steady him before either of them fell.

“The one cuff keeps his Galra arm from working,” Lance said. He heard Hunk quietly repeat the words to Keith. “The other one’s… some kind of shock bracelet. Like… like a shock collar on a dog. Except worse.”

There was a beat of silence, like Hunk wasn’t sure he wanted to say that out loud, and then when he did Coran spoke up over the comms.

“We’ll have to get them off of him before he can go in the healing pod. I don’t know how the tech will react, but it most likely… would be bad.”

They’d gotten out of the debris. Lance blinked in the bright sunlight reflecting off of the sand. The yellow, green, and red lions all stood in a semi-circle around the destroyed control room. Green dropped her head and opened her mouth as Pidge approached.

“My cuff just fell off when the power went out,” Lance rambled, letting Pidge lead him into her lion. “I don’t know why Shiro’s are still on…”

“I’ll get them off,” Pidge said, letting Lance slip down onto the floor of the Green lion’s cockpit, just behind the pilot’s chair. 

“Negative,” Hunk grunted. “Get Lance to the castle.”

Pidge bristled. “You’re not our leader, Hunk.”

Hunk didn’t answer at first, the only sound coming over the comms a quiet grunt and then “All clear?” obviously directed at Keith. After that, he addressed Pidge. “I’m sure if he was awake, he’d tell you the same thing.”

Lance was shivering. It was much cooler on the floor of the green lion than it had been on the planet, in the cell… 

“Lance. Lance!”

His eyes snapped open—he’d closed them? He didn’t remember—and Pidge was there in front of him. Her eyebrows furrowed with worry.

“Okay, he’s really not doing good. Coran, I’ll be there in five dobashes.”

“Tell me his injuries while you’re on your way,” Coran’s voice said in Lance’s head. “I’ll need to prepare.”

Pidge disappeared from Lance’s line of sight, and a scared noise left his mouth before he could stop it. He was having a hard time keeping track of what was going on. He kept seeing the darkness, Vaktla or the guard, or his empty cell and Shiro all alone—

Pidge came back, eyes big. “Hey Lance, it’s okay. I’m still here. I’m just going to be right here flying Green, okay? It’s gonna be all right. I’m right here.”

“I’m here as well, my boy,” Coran said soothingly. “You’re safe now.”

Lance clung to the warm feeling of the word _safe_ and let himself drift.

 

“…arm in a sling… don’t think it’s broken…”

“…you think… concussion?”

“Probably… can’t tell…”

“…waiting for… just…”

 

The light changed again. Lance’s eyes fluttered. Someone put their arms around him, and then he was being lifted off the ground, gentle hands careful not to jostle his shoulder. Lance frowned, trying to get his eyes open, trying to focus…

“Shh, I’ve got you,” Coran told him. Keith’s helmet was gone. “Let’s get you cleaned up. Couple quintents in the pods and you’ll be good as new, hey?”

Lance buried his face in Coran’s shoulder as the world spun around him. 

 

“Is he…”

“…be fine, just needs a bit…”

“…bring him… watch his arm…”

“…careful… don’t…”

 

The sling around his arm was gone. Coran hovered over him, smiling even though it looked worried. Lance blinked. He was really, really tired…

“I know,” Coran said, and Lance realized he’d said that aloud. “Just hang in there a little longer, all right? This is going to hurt a bit, but then it’ll be all better.”

“You’re being so brave, Lance,” a different voice said, and Lance turned his head just enough to see Allura. “You can do it for just a little more.”

Lance didn’t know what she was talking about. He wasn’t being brave. He was on the edge of passing out and all he was doing anyway was lying still while Coran gently touched his left arm. Slivers of pain ran down from his shoulder and Lance gritted his teeth to keep from crying out. 

“Nearly done,” Coran promised him. A look passed between him and Allura, and then Coran pressed his shoulder.

Lance couldn’t bite back the scream. His right hand grabbed for something, anything to hold on to, and he found someone’s hand and held tight. His shoulder was on fire, everything burned and stung and something stabbed over and over—

The pain faded, and he heard Coran’s quiet, repetitive soothing, and Lance let his eyes close.

 

“…got it, he’s good to…”

“…looks awful… Coran…”

“Sit with Lance… let me see him…”

 

Someone else was holding his hand now, a big, calloused, gentle hand rubbing his palm and brushing his hair from his forehead. “It’s okay now, Lance. You’re gonna be okay. Coran’s helping Shiro get into a pod, and then it’s your turn, and you’re gonna be okay, okay?”

Lance got his eyes open long enough to meet Hunk’s gaze. Tears streaked his face and Lance wanted to wipe them away, but he couldn’t quite get his arms to move…

 

“…going to be all right…”

“…was so cold, Coran—”

“I know…”

 

“Up you come,” Coran said, gentle hands guiding him upright. Hunk’s fingers were a constant pressure on his hand, refusing to let him go. He was tired, dizzy, he ached everywhere, and he still couldn’t quite figure out what was going on…

“You can rest now, Lance. You did such a good job. We’re all so proud of you.”

He didn’t know what they meant. He didn’t—didn’t know what was happening—couldn’t focus—couldn’t think—

“Rest now,” Coran said. His voice faded and Hunk’s hand dropped away as something slid between them. Lance felt cold, and then he was too tired to feel anything. 

He let himself slip away with Coran’s last whispered words hanging in his ears.

_You’re safe now._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There you guys go, it's the rescue you've all been asking for! Now for two chapters of wrapping up...
> 
> As always, I'm so grateful for all of the kudos, comments, and feedback! You guys are what makes it fun to write this. (What would be the point of being horrible to characters if there are no readers to scream about it?) Thanks for sticking with me this far. <3


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What was I saying last time about showing up late with Starbucks? Ha ha ha... Sorry for the hiatus rivaling that of Sherlock, guys! Life's been interesting the last several months. Here's the last chapter, finally, for those of you who stuck around this long.
> 
> No warnings, all hugs. Hugs for everyone.

When Lance stumbled out of the pod, everyone was waiting for him.

He felt stiff and tired, uncomfortable in a lot of different ways, but he didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt, and that was one of the first things he noticed. The pain he’d started to get used to was gone, replaced by a tired, quiet ache begging for food, a shower, and sleep.

The next thing he noticed was Hunk. He caught Lance as his knees buckled, his mind still cold and confused.

“Hey buddy,” Hunk said, wrapping his arms around Lance’s shoulders and holding him tight.

“Hunk,” Lance breathed, and then everything fell into place. He remembered the rescue, Hunk and Keith and Pidge getting him and Shiro out. He didn’t remember much of what had happened after Pidge had gotten him to the green lion. But he knew he was in the castle now, and he knew he was safe. He relaxed against Hunk’s chest, slipping his own arms around Hunk.

A small weight thumped into his side. Lance glanced down at Pidge’s head as she squirmed into the hug, shorts arms squeezing Lance’s waist.

“We were worried about you,” Pidge said. “Don’t ever do that again.”

“I will definitely try not to,” Lance agreed readily, a little out of breath from two tight hugs at the same time. Pidge relaxed her grip on him enough that he could catch his breath.

A new figure joined the group. “Good to see you awake, my boy.” Lance looked up at Coran. The older Altean smiled down at him, wrinkles crinkling the corners of his eyes.

“Hey Coran,” Lance said. He let go of Hunk with one arm and reached out to hug Coran as well. He was halfway through the action when he fully realized that both of his arms were working normally, without pain.

“How are you feeling?” Hunk asked.

“Really, really great.” Lance moved his left arm from its place around Hunk, rotating it experimentally. No pain. “I mean, I want a shower and a nap, and I think I could eat a horse. But otherwise, really great.”

“I’ll get you something to eat,” Hunk said. “Anything you want. What are you hungry for?”

“Like I said, I would literally eat a horse right now.” Lance didn’t care what he ate; everything sounded good right about now. Even food goo would probably taste like a five-star meal.

“What kind of food is a horse?” Coran asked. Pidge snorted, then started to tell him that a horse wasn’t actually a food item. Lance didn’t hear her full explanation. He caught sight of a lone figure over Hunk’s shoulder, standing away from the rest of the group, gaze caught on a second healing pod.

Lance frowned. “Is Keith okay?”

“Yeah, he…” Hunk glanced behind him. “He’s okay. He’s just worried about Shiro. He was worried about you too, of course. We all were.”

“Pidge mentioned something about that,” Lance said. Then he raised his voice and called to Keith. “Hey, Mullet. You gonna come say hi?”

Keith turned. He looked confused and distant for a second before his eyes settled on Lance and his expression cleared. “Wha—Oh, Lance. Hi.”

“Hi,” Lance repeated back to him, moving over to stand next to him. Keith looked exhausted, and Lance wondered if he’d slept at all in the past few days. Maybe they both needed the shower-food-sleep treatment.

“How are you feeling?” Keith asked, a little stiffly.

“Like I could eat a horse,” Lance said.

“You need to stop saying that,” Hunk said behind him. “Coran is really concerned.”

Lance cast a glance at Shiro, still in the healing pod with his eyes closed and his expression relaxed save for a small crease between his eyebrows. His chest rose and fell faintly and his eyelids twitched slightly. A faint scar was all that was left of the cut on his forehead, and other than that, he looked perfectly fine.

“He’s going to be okay,” Hunk said.

“I know,” Keith snapped, just as Lance was opening his mouth to respond. Lance glanced at Keith, who quickly looked away and mumbled, “Sorry.”

Hunk looked at him, concern written behind his eyes, but he didn’t say anything.

“How much longer does he have to be in there?” Lance asked.

“Coran says he’s doing really well, so maybe by dinner time in a few hours he’ll be out.” Pidge stood next to Lance and studied the screen in front of the healing pod, as if checking Coran’s words for herself.

Lance’s stomach rumbled. “Hey, speaking of dinner time…”

“Already on it,” Hunk said, turning to the door. “You want to come on down to the kitchen and I’ll get you something?”

“Absolutely,” Lance said, falling into step behind Hunk, Pidge following after him.

At the door, he looked back at Keith, still standing in front of Shiro’s healing pod. A twinge of something twisted his stomach, and he almost asked Hunk to bring the food up to him instead, but he shook his head to clear the feeling. Shiro was okay. They were both okay.

 

They stopped at Lance’s room on the way to the kitchen, just long enough for him to change into his own clothes. He’d always loved his jacket, but it had never felt so comfortable before. The gritty feeling of sand still clung to him, and he figured that wouldn’t go away until he could take a shower, which was high on his list of things to do. Food was his first priority, though – a long, hot shower could be taken after eating.

As they walked down the hallway, Lance noticed something else, a feeling in the back of his head, a presence that he’d gone without for so long – Blue.

They couldn’t really communicate, not at this distance, but Lance felt her, felt her purr in the back of his head and impatiently wait for him to come see her. He felt every bit as impatient, eating the bowl of food goo Hunk gave him far too fast, despite both Hunk’s and Pidge’s warnings to slow down before he made himself sick. Pidge talked while he ate, telling the story of how she’d finally managed to override the Klit’ni systems simply by hacking their power source and restarting it, which gave the paladins a window of time to attack the base without the weapon firing at them before they were even close enough to hit anything. Hunk interrupted here and there, adding details she missed or going on about how awesome something had been.

Allura stopped in, asked Lance how he was feeling, and told him she was glad he was all right and they’d all missed him. It was genuine, and even though Lance winked at her when he said he’d missed her too, underneath that a warm feeling spread through him. The relief he felt at being safe and being back in the castle with all of them—it was almost overwhelming. When Allura left again and Hunk asked if he wanted more food, Lance fought back tears.

He’d missed them. He’d thought he’d never see them again, but here he was, sitting on a stool as the mice cleaned out the last scraps of his food goo and Pidge perched on the corner of the counter, Hunk leaning over her to push Chuchule and Platt out of the way to refill Lance’s bowl, and Shiro was going to be out of the pod in a few hours and he was okay, they were both going to be okay and that felt like too much.

Blue’s presence in the back of his head grew, comforting and gentle and steady and familiar and so intensely welcoming. Lance forced down the lump in his throat, suddenly unsure of if he would be able to eat a second helping of food goo.

“Hey, Hunk?” He managed to get the words out, so when Hunk glanced back at him he finished a bit more confidently. “I think I’m going to pass on seconds and just go see Blue, and then take a shower and maybe get a nap.”

“Okay, no problem.” Hunk dropped his bowl in the sink, then moved around from behind the counter. “Do you want one of us to go with you?”

“No, I’ll be okay.” Lance got up from the stool on his own, even though Hunk stood right next to him just in case he needed help.

Pidge slid down from the counter too. “You sure, Lance?”

“Positive,” Lance promised. “I’ll be back in the med bay in a few hours when Shiro gets out, or I might come find you guys sooner to hang out. But I’ll probably just sleep.”

“Sleep all you need to, buddy.” Hunk wrapped him up in another crushing hug, and Lance relished it, leaning into him. “See you in a bit then, and don’t hesitate to come get us for anything, okay?”

“If there is anything I need, you will be the first to hear about it.” Lance squeezed Hunk, then stepped back. Hunk and Pidge trailed him to the door, seeming hesitant to let him out of their sight. He couldn’t blame them, but he was impatient to see Blue, and her impatience steadily grew in his head too.

“See you guys in a bit.” He stepped out into the hallway, and Hunk raised his hand in a wave.

“See you, Lance. Be careful,” Pidge called after him.

“I’ll be _fine,”_ Lance called back. _Love you guys,_ popped into his head, and he almost called it back over his shoulder, his mouth was open and the words were there, but then he stopped. Hunk and Pidge stood side by side in the kitchen doorway, the slightest bit of anxiety written on Hunk’s face, and that sealed it. Lance turned, walked back, and wrapped his arms around both of them.

“Love you guys,” he said. They both hugged him back, Pidge’s small arms squeezing tightly around his waist and Hunk’s big, strong hands holding him, close and safe. “Thanks for getting me out of there.”

“We love you too,” Hunk said, and Lance felt his breath on his ear as he spoke. “And don’t thank us. We’re really sorry it took so long.”

“Yeah, what were we supposed to do, just leave you there?” Pidge gently punched his arm. “We need you, man.”

Lance didn’t answer, just held onto that moment, all of them with their arms around each other and starting to feel safe and okay and _home._ He felt Hunk’s breathing and heard his heartbeat, felt Pidge’s arms around his waist and her fingers digging into the back of his jacket. He never wanted to let go.

Eventually, Blue’s impatience wormed its way back into the center of his thoughts. Pidge’s hands loosened, and Lance took a step back.

“See you in a few hours,” Hunk said.

“Or sooner,” Pidge added.

“Right,” Hunk agreed. “Or sooner. Come find us. Talk to us. Hang out with us. We love you.”

Lance smiled at them. “Thanks, guys. See you later.” He walked backwards, waving at them, until he turned out of sight.

And then he ran, the whole way to Blue’s hangar.

She was waiting for him, particle barrier down, head lowered and entry ramp extended, and Lance kept running right up into the cockpit.

She purred loudly in his head, and now he could hear her thoughts too, feelings and images all pressing around him in a big, happy, loving embrace.

“Hey girl,” he said, feeling warmth bubble up in his chest. He didn’t know how much of it was from him, how much from her, wasn’t sure where her enthusiasm stopped and where his began, but it didn’t matter. “How are you feeling? All rested up and okay?”

She responded with a strong positive feeling. She was fully repaired from her crash on the Klit’ni planet, and aside from worrying over and missing her paladin, nothing else had ailed her.

Lance started to apologize for worrying her, but was interrupted by depths of sadness and guilt washing over him. It was from Blue, and he saw images that explained the feelings. Sadness for what her paladin was undoubtedly experiencing, sadness now for what she saw in his memories. Lance pushed away the memories before he had a chance to think about them, and Blue agreed. Her paladin had had enough pain; he did not need to relive it again.

Lance curled up in the pilot’s seat. Blue apologized now, telling him of how she badly she had wanted to get him out of there, how terrible she had felt that she had been too weak and injured to move. How much she had wanted to destroy everyone who had hurt her paladin, her boy, her cub, to rescue him and bring him safely home.

“It’s okay, Blue,” Lance told her. “That crash took a lot out of you, but you kept me safe during it and I wasn’t hurt at all. And that weapon would’ve just knocked you out of the sky again if you tried to attack later. They might’ve captured you, taken you to Zarkon, and I… I couldn’t…”

He couldn’t finish, but Blue understood. Her presence wrapped around his mind, warm, comforting. He let his eyes close, feeling tired and quiet and safe.

_Love you, Blue,_ he thought.

_Love you too, my paladin,_ Blue rumbled back.

 

****

 

“Lance? Hey buddy, this isn’t the most comfortable place for you to nap.”

Lance cracked his eyes open. Shiro’s face blurred into focus, smiling down at him. Lance blinked, once, twice, and then it clicked. He was still in his chair in Blue’s cockpit, and he’d fallen asleep, likely slept for hours.

“Shiro!” Lance leapt to his feet. He threw his arms around Shiro’s neck, practically falling, and Shiro grabbed the back of the pilot’s chair to keep his own balance.

“Hey Lance.” He hugged Lance, and Lance felt his strong arms around his back, both working just fine.

“How are you feeling? I’m sorry I missed you getting out of the healing pod, I just came down to say hi to Blue and fell asleep by accident, I meant to be there—” Lance’s words stumbled together, eventually getting cut off by Shiro’s soft chuckle.

“I’m feeling great,” Shiro said. “And I’m glad you got some sleep.”

“I feel bad,” Lance said. “I wanted to be there—”

“No feeling bad.” Shiro looked down at him, smiling but firm. “That’s an order.”

“Hey, we’re a team, remember?” Lance pointed out. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

“Oh, come on.” Shiro practically snorted. “Fine, then as your teammate, I request that you don’t feel bad, because I missed you getting out of the healing pod too.”

“That’s different,” Lance argued. “You were—”

“Sleeping,” Shiro said. “I was sleeping. Just like you.”

“No! You were in the pod—”

“Sleeping,” Shiro interrupted stubbornly. “Healing. Resting. Sleeping. Just like you.”

Lance huffed a playfully irritated sigh. “Fine. Whatever.”

“No feeling bad?”

“No feeling bad.”

“Good.” Shiro’s arms tightened in another quick hug, and then he stepped back. “Hunk and Pidge are waiting outside. You ready to go out there?”

“Yeah, I’m ready.” Lance stretched out his back, a little cramped from sleeping in his chair for hours. They walked to the exit ramp, side by side, and then Lance stopped.

Shiro still had that faint line over his eyebrow. The cut had been half-healed and reopened too many times for the healing pod to completely erase it. Lance wondered if it would eventually fade over time, or if it would always be there. If it would always be a reminder of what they’d gone through.

His gaze dropped to Shiro’s wrist, his human one, hidden by his sleeve. Shiro followed his gaze, reaching for the edge of the sleeve.

“It’s still there,” Shiro said quietly, starting to roll back the fabric and revealing the edge of a slightly shiny, red scar.

“Mine too.” Lance pushed back the cuff of his jacket. A ring of scarred skin went around his wrist. Shiro’s eyes were dark, distant, sad. They were safe now, safe from the Klit’ni, but the scars were still there. They always would be.

“We’re okay.” The words sounded more like a question to Lance’s own ears, a bit hesitant, a bit fearful.

Shiro echoed him, a little stronger. “We will be.”

With Shiro's arm around his shoulders, Lance stepped out of Blue, and he finally truly felt safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap, folks! The boys are safe, although they've still got awhile to go before they're truly okay, and I've got plenty of sequel ideas... We'll see what the future holds! Thanks for reading. :)


End file.
